


Take A Bite Of My Heart Tonight

by melancholymango



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Anal Sex, Awkward Crush, Awkward Sexual Situations, Friends to Lovers, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Getting Together, Halloween, Incubus Keith (Voltron), M/M, Oral Sex, Pining Keith (Voltron), Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Promiscuous Lance (Voltron), Sexual Tension, Threesome - M/M/M, all sex acts are safe sane and consensual, consensual voyeurism, ps: lance/rolo are exes, then later on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-20 13:59:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12434310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melancholymango/pseuds/melancholymango
Summary: Keith, against all of his wishes, finds himself to be a barista at his older brother's coffee shop. It helps that the cafe is only a ten minute journey on foot from his humble apartment. Keith has memorized the perfect path to get back home as quickly as possible. It's a left, and a right, a quick jog through a fenced yard, and then—it's the unnerving scream ringing out through the early morning air and causing him to trip over his feet.The routine is compromised in an instant and suddenly it's the creep of shadows peeking out from a too-narrow alley, the shiver that wracks his frame as he pokes his nose into places where it shouldn't be, and finally it's the creeping realization that he'll never be the same person he was when he stepped into the darkness. Juggling his college classes, his full-time job, and the obnoxiously endearing boy that had barreled straight into his daily routine this school year was hard enough without these strange... urges, on top of it all.(Loosely based off of this prompt: “I just got turned into an incubus and i’m like the least smooth and most self-conscious person on the planet so i’m literally starving because i don’t know how to seduce people” AU)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all ever have so many responsibilities that you start a new responsibility just to spite the other ones? That's what this is, my impulsive little spite baby, I'm so proud of her out here kickin' ass. Was she a good idea? Most definitely not. Am I having fun? Oh yes, I've riding the heck out of this downward spiral.
> 
> Please support my undoubtedly bad decisions by feeding me comments and trying in vain to reassure me that this is what I should be doing with my time. Follow me on my social medias to ask me highly important questions about my work, such as my personal favorite: "Why?"
> 
> twitter - https://twitter.com/MelancholyMango
> 
> tumblr - melancholymango.tumblr.com
> 
> wattpad - https://www.wattpad.com/user/MelancholyMango
> 
> Anyway, on That note, I just wanna give y'all a little itty bitty disclosure that this first chapter has a different vibe than the rest of them because it's more a prologue than anything else? Keith is (for some reason??) not into the idea of a strange man in an alley trying to bite him and turn him into a supernatural creature so he freaks out, then afterward has a panic attack. If that kinda thing bothers you, skim the end of the first chapter and the rest of the story will be fine.
> 
> OH, also before any wise-asses come into my comments trying to tell me my incubi LORE isn't accurate I would just like to remind you all that you are reading supernatural sexy GARBAGE. Please don't question me on logistics, I'm here to serve porn, that's the only thing on the menu at my restaurant.

Keith inhaled steadily, summoning every bit of self-control he’d held onto throughout his shift to keep from kicking the smoothie machine. An entire group of freshman had walked into the cafe a few minutes ago, every one of them talking over one another excitedly, wearing full outfits with perfectly-styled hair and make-up. Keith had glared at them as they walked up to the counter, wondering what parts of their souls they’d chosen to sacrifice to have so much energy so early in the morning.

Every single one had asked for a smoothie, all seven of them. Keith debated trying to weasel his way out of it by claiming the smoothie machine was on the fritz, but he knew Shiro would find out about it one way or another with his sixth sense as an employer and Keith wasn’t in the mood for that particular lecture all over again. So, albeit begrudgingly, he’d come to face the machine that haunted his every nightmare. 

He attempted to force the stiff lever downward to start the smoothie-making process. 

He failed miserably, as usual. Shiro had promised him the day he’d been hired that eventually the machine would get easier to maneuver, that he’d work up the muscle necessary to turn it on. It hadn’t happened yet. 

Keith had just about accepted his fate and was prepared to tell the customers that he had to re-take their entire order, when a glint of metal flashed past his face. He was forced to watch on petulantly as Shiro’s prosthetic effortlessly shoved the lever down, no struggle whatsoever. The machine whirred to life and Keith scrambled to put the cup back into place beneath the spout, lest his white shoes get covered in strawberry banana. 

Shiro, the utter angel that he was (not that Keith would ever admit as much out loud), gave him a pat on the back and told him he’d handle the rest of the order. Keith didn’t have any energy left in him to say anything in response, merely grunted his approval before disappearing behind the swinging doors into the employee’s only lounge. He collapsed onto the plaid over-used couch with a sigh, ignoring the crack and pop of his tired bones.

He must have drifted off after that, but for how long he wasn’t sure. He woke up to a finger holding his eyelid open and curious dark eyes raking over his face with concern.

“Keith? You awake?” Shiro asked, looking relieved when Keith’s pupils focused in on him rather than staring off into unconscious nothingness. Keith growled before he could stop himself, hand darting forward to smack Shiro’s away with all the force his aching limbs could muster.

“Do I look like I’m awake?” Keith snarked, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Busy night?” Shiro snickered, sitting back on his haunches. Keith sat up, tiredly rubbing at his eyes as a yawn clawed its way up his throat. He fell back into the cushions, squinting angrily up at the flourescent lighting overhead. He could literally feel what a rat’s nest his hair was beneath the hairnet, but he didn’t dare to take it off in fear of making matters worse.

“Up until the past two hours? No.” He answered, standing up and grumbling when his knees protested his every movement. He grabbed his backpack up from the floor, slinging it over one shoulder. “Things were pretty dead until 5am rolled around and then every student in the city decided this was the place to go for a coffee fix. I have… so many burns on my hands.”

“Aw, man.” Shiro sighed, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Tell me you at least get to go home and sleep it off now?”

Keith pulled his phone out of his pocket, scowling when he realized it was already creeping up on 7am, meaning he’d been asleep for nearly an hour after getting off work. Time he could have been using to sleep on his familiar, cheap, discount mattress had been substituted for a shitty nap on a couch that wreaked of caffeine. 

“I have a class at noon, so I’ve got just over five hours until I have to deal with the real world again.” He explained, hearing the telltale ding of a new customer walking into the building. Shiro jumped to his feet and straightened out his apron, turning back to Keith with one last worried grin. Keith rolled his eyes, untying his own apron. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to have any trouble passing out the moment I get back.”

“Good, get as much sleep as you can.” Shiro pleaded with him, clapping him playfully on the shoulder as he walked past. If Keith almost fell over from the unintentional force behind it, then luckily Shiro didn’t call him out on it. “Text me when you get home safely.”

“You got it, big bro.” Keith answered, giving a mock salute. Shiro disappeared into the front of the shop to greet the new customers and Keith allowed his shoulders to slump, a frown taking up residence on his face. 

He dropped his backpack unceremoniously back to the floor, stuffing his apron down into it as well as the dumb visor Shiro forced him to wear. He pulled off the hairnet and shoved it in his back too, uncaring that his hair probably resembled a lion mane. How many people were going to be out and about right now anyway? It was surely better than looking like a school cafeteria worker. 

Keith wrapped his jacket tightly around himself, grabbing his bag and stepping outside into the cool October air. He hissed out a breath through his teeth, unsurprised when it showed in a wisp in front of him. He trudged down the alleyway behind Shiro’s cafe, burying his hands into his pockets as he walked through the early morning sunrise. 

It was a nice day all things considered, but Keith had hardly slept in over twenty-four hours and he was finding it particularly difficult to think about anything other than that. He curled in on himself, shoving headphones on just to ensure no one would try talking to him, not even bothering to actually play any music through them. 

His apartment building was merely a block or two away from the cafe and even before his older brother had hired him, he’d worked out the fastest and easiest route to and from the two destinations. It involved a lot of alleys and cutting through one poorly-fenced yard, but it saved him from the early morning traffic on the main roads and got him home five minutes sooner than the main drag would, so it was worth the risk.

Keith was doing just that, hopping over the short wooden fence before the owner of the yard could spot him, when a shrill voice rang out so loudly that he heard it even with his ears covered. It wasn’t quite loud enough for him to make out what the person was saying, but it was enough to startle him. He tumbled over the fence after that, cursing as his hands hit the pavement on the other side. 

He sat up slowly, head spinning as he took a minute to recover. Next thing he knew, he was angrily snatching his backpack off the fence where it was hanging, only realizing what a mistake that was when his hands stung in pained protest. Keith sighed, staring down at his scraped-up palms, transfixed in the blood starting to rush to the surface. 

“Help!” He heard the voice loud and clear that time, his head snapping upward and eyes glued to the dark shadows between the two looming buildings further down the alley. It was the opposite direction he normally went, and pathetically, he _ recognized _ the slim dark passage as the scariest part of his usual path. He avoided it like the plague, the constantly-shadowed pathway always giving him chills. 

The buildings on either side were tall and close enough that not a ray of sunlight filtered down between them. It had always been eerie, but even more-so now that he was on the ground only a few feet away from the shadows, listening intently enough to make out the muffled voices and sounds of struggle.

Keith sat there, quivering like a leaf in the wind, threatening to do something drastic like go flying from the branch it’d been secured on so long. He had a routine, he had a path that he always stuck to without fail, he’d promised Shiro not to go looking for trouble anymore. Trouble had found him this time though, so surely that was an exception? He couldn’t just… do nothing, could he?

Keith swallowed harshly, getting to his feet and creeping toward the mouth of the alley. The noises grew clearer the closer he grew, the sick sound of fabric tearing and pleas muffled by a hand loosely cupped over a mouth. His eyes widened, heart racing as the panicked noises kicked his survival instincts into gear. 

He charged into the darkness blindly, eyes adjusting much too slowly. By the time he could make out the scene in front of him, both the people had already turned to look at him with wide eyes. The man, a slender-built tall fellow with long white hair that had to have been dyed, with his two arms encasing a much smaller form pressed against the brick wall. Keith tried to make himself seem less terrified than he felt.

Why hadn’t he just called the cops?! If he survived through this, Shiro was going to kick his ass.

“Hey! Stop it!” Keith yelled angrily, charging forward before he could talk himself out of it. The man looked affronted as Keith sailed through the air, essentially pouncing on him and grabbing a fistful of that obnoxious hair. He yanked back hard, driving a punch into the stranger’s gut in the same instance that he tumbled backward. “Get your hands off of her!”

As Keith wrestled the man as far away from the woman as he could, he caught a glimpse of frightened brown eyes over the assailant’s shoulders. Then they were gone, blinking fast and tear-filled, and then determined as the woman turned and ran with all she had. 

Keith breathed a ragged sigh of relief, foolishly thinking that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do just like that. His grip on the man’s hair went just slack enough that the stranger spun around, hand soaring forward into the middle of Keith’s chest and bunting him backward. The adrenaline alone wasn’t enough to combat the tiredness in his legs and he yelped, stumbling back into the opposite brick wall and hitting the back of his head off of it.

The stranger was upon him in an instant, faster than any normal person should have been able to react as arms came down to cage Keith in where he was. The man towered over him as he leaned closer, breath reeking of something irony that Keith tried in vain to convince himself couldn’t have possibly been blood. He reluctantly looked up to make eye contact, his own breath faltering and choking in his throat when he found bright yellow eyes boring down at him, lacking pupils entirely.

“You just cost me a meal.” The stranger tsked, almost as if scolding a child. Keith tried to remember to breathe around the lump forming in his throat, but as the man’s lips pulled back into a sneer-like smile and revealed rows of shiny, white fangs… Keith’s willpower to remain calm crumbled. 

Something in Keith kicked back in then and he  _ thrashed _ , whipping himself from side-to-side and throwing his limbs out in every which direction. He screamed with all he had until a hand clamped down over his mouth, and then he retaliated by baring his teeth and sinking them into flesh animalistically. 

“Let go of me!” He yelled as the hand darted away from his face. He ducked under the man’s arm and ran, he shot out of the alley with everything he had. He’d just jumped out of the shadows and inhaled for the first time in nearly twenty seconds, thinking that maybe the monster wouldn’t dare to follow him into the sunlight, when a hand grabbed onto the collar of his jacket and yanked him effortlessly backward.

He soared through the air, landing on his ass in the middle of the shadowed alleyway. He whimpered, eyes darting around and failing to spot the threat until it was too late. A hand wrapped around his neck from behind, squeezing so tightly Keith could feel the  _ claws _ digging into his throat and threatening to draw blood. 

“I _ could  _ feed off of you, an eye for an eye... but you’re pissing me off.” The man purred quietly, leaning close enough that his lips moved over the shell of Keith’s ear with each word he spoke. Keith stiffened, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as a tongue darted out to lick experimentally around the curve of his ear, as if testing for a reaction. Keith refused to give one. The man growled, grip tightening on Keith’s airway until he physically could not draw a breath. “I don’t know that I  _ want _ to have sex with you.”

He stood then, leaving Keith panting and doubled over on the concrete. He had no idea what the stranger was doing, where he was or what he was planning, but Keith narrowed his eyes challengingly at the ground and curled his hands into fists.

“I  _ definitely  _ don’t want to have sex with you, ugly ass!” Keith snapped, head whipping around in an effort to spot the enemy before he could pounce. He blinked, failing to see anyone. He wondered if maybe the man had finally taken a hint and left, or if there were authorities closing in on them by now. He looked around one last time, then shakily got to his feet, apprehensive even as he crept toward the exit once again. 

He’d nearly made it there when a low laughter filled the darkness. The hair on the back of Keith’s neck rose up and he turned around, eyes wide as they landed on the ledge a few feet overhead where the monster had settled. He was watching Keith curiously, lips tilted up into a smirk, eyes narrowed and predatory as they glowed yellow in the dark.

“Ah, there, you made my decision for me.” The man stated plainly, sounding conclusive as he jumped down and landed directly in front of Keith. Keith prepared himself to fight, to throw punches the moment the stranger tried anything, but the moment his fist flew, a hand clamped down around it and yanked him forward. He stumbled into the other man’s chest, finding himself backed up against a wall in an instant. 

Keith looked up with wide, wild eyes and prepared himself for the worst. He knew even as he squirmed, that there was no shaking this man off of him now, the grip was too secure. He could do nothing but watch, watch helplessly as those fangs from before made an appearance.

“H-Hey, wait a minute, I don’t-” Keith backtracked, realizing that whatever the monster had in mind now must have been even worse than having sex with him. Was he going to die here? Was he about to get eaten alive? 

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, blinking away tears as he felt hot breath roll across his neck. Then, without any preamble, long razor-like teeth sunk deep into his flesh. He cried out, hands clenching uselessly at his sides and jaw going slack as pain barreled through him. “Ah!”

The pain subsided surprisingly quickly after the initial bite, replaced by something that almost seemed to numb the affected area, it was cool and tingly across his skin. Keith’s hands relaxed slightly, eyes widening impossibly further as the monster’s fangs retreated back into his gums and left the wound. He didn’t leave though, no, of course not. He simply leaned back in, lathing his disgusting tongue across the bitemark as Keith’s head spun and the world around him went fuzzy at the edges, a weird burning heat replacing that coolness from before.

As the seconds ticked by and Keith stood there dumbly, feeling like the energy had been zapped from his body, he realized that the monster in front of him was kissing and biting at his neck in a way that wasn’t  _ meant  _ to inflict harm. It was supposed to be sexual and despite the retch that threatened to tear its way past Keith’s lips, he was mortified to realize that the burning heat in him wasn’t exactly an  _ objection _ to what was happening. 

The man pulled back eventually, after leaving what could have been upwards of fifty hickeys on Keith’s neck, given that he was a little too out of it at the moment to register how much time was passing. He blinked warily as his attacker pulled away, wiping his sleeve across his mouth to gather up what Keith realized belatedly was blood. His blood.

“Help!” Keith screamed suddenly, blinking rapidly as his senses came back to him. He was hanging on to the last of his energy no matter how much he wanted to pass out. “Someone help me!”

“Scream all you want, the damage has already been done.” The monster replied easily, licking his lips as he pressed his thumb painfully-hard into the bite mark on Keith’s neck. Keith hissed, gnashing his teeth together as the sting rang through him. “You’re a monster now, just like me. You feel it don’t you? That gnawing hunger settling low in the pit of your stomach?  _ Lust _ ?”

Keith shivered, pushing his thighs closer together as shame settled in him. He refused to believe that any of this was real, that there was any way in hell this maniac in an alley was telling the truth. He wasn’t a monster, he had nothing in common with this… person. He was just touch-starved and confused, overly sensitive to touch even when he didn’t want it. 

He _ didn’t  _ want it, he knew that much.

“Get off of me!” Keith snarled, using all the force he could to shove the form in front of him away. The man stumbled backward, to the other side of the alley where he simply leaned across the parallel brick wall and stared at Keith. He looked so smug, so undoubtedly proud of himself like he’d done something utterly horrible, it made Keith’s skin crawl with the possibility that maybe… maybe this guy wasn’t as crazy as Keith wanted to believe.

“It’s only gonna get worse and worse if you don’t feed, until you’re the one forcing yourself on people in the alley because you can’t fight your own primal urges.” The man explained smoothly, raking his eyes slowly over Keith’s frame. “Don’t worry, they get pretty complacent after you make eye contact and glamor them a little bit. Anyone can be persuaded to do anything when you’re a sex demon.”

Maybe it was having a name to associate the monster in front of him with, but suddenly it felt all the more real. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to even consider the possibility that this might actually be happening. He didn’t want to believe that this bite could _ mean _ something like that for him. It was insane. 

Demons weren’t _ real. _ None of this was real. This was just a psychotic person in an alley with some wonky Halloween contacts and a vampire fetish. That was it.

Keith looked up with harsh words back on the tip of his tongue, desperate for a distraction, but found the space across from him was unoccupied. He looked around with worried eyes, tears building the longer he went without seeing anyone. Why would the stranger just leave like that if he didn’t genuinely believe he’d gotten Keith back somehow, that he’d done his worst?

Keith sunk down the wall to sit on the cold pavement, bringing his knees to his chest and burying his face into them as he broke down. He sobbed, curling in on himself.

He sat like that for a long while, utterly alone and filled with more anxiety than he’d ever experienced in his life. He panted through the panic of it all and dug his phone out of his pocket, dialing Shiro’s number by muscle memory alone. He waited as it rang endlessly, eventually reaching a voice mail that had Keith throwing his phone across the alley in anger. 

Of course, Keith regretted that immediately and crawled forward to grab his only connection to the outside world. He dialed in the second most familiar number in his mind, biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood as he willed himself to stop crying long enough to have a conversation.

The phone rang a few times and for a moment Keith was terrified that it’d go to voicemail as well, but instead a click sounded and a long yawn filtered brokenly through the speakers of his phone. Keith let out a breathless, humorless chuckle and slumped backward against the wall.

“What the hell are you doing calling me at 8am on a Sunday? Did you just get off work?” Pidge grumbled coldly, making it clear that he’d woken them up. Keith blinked rapidly, digging his nails into his thigh through his jeans and trying to stave off more tears. Pidge, unbeknownst to his current state, animatedly continued on with a little bit more energy as they began to wake up. “I only went to bed like an hour ago and I’m exhausted, you… dinkwad.”

Keith wiped away tears with his sleeve, sniffling just a little bit too loudly and realizing it the moment the other end of the line went deadly silent. No shuffling around in the blankets, no complaining, not even a breath came from Pidge’s end of the phone. Keith wasn’t the type to cry, he never reached out when he was feeling emotional, all it took to know that it was something deadly serious was a single sniffle.

“Pidge.” Keith breathed, trying to keep his tone even and failing miserably. He gave a watery laugh, his breathing losing rhythm again as he began to hyperventilate at the thought of repeating what had just happened to him. How would he even begin to explain that?! 

He whimpered pathetically, heaving a sob from deep in his chest. “I just got attacked by a sex offender in an alleyway, he fucking bit me.”

“Jesus Christ.” Pidge exhaled, suddenly sounding wide awake. Keith heard it as they launched out of bed, the mattress springs creaking beneath the shift in weight. He tried to calm his breathing enough to focus on the sound of Pidge getting ready, tried to focus on anything but the dull ache in the place where his neck met his shoulder, where he’d been bitten. 

A moment later, Keith heard the jingle of keys in Pidge’s hands. “Okay, text me your location, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“No!” Keith shouted, voice breaking mid-way through and loudness giving way to weakness. He huffed, tilting his head back and staring far ahead where the sky could just barely be glimpsed between the two buildings. “Don’t… leave me alone.”

“You want me to stay on the phone with you?” Pidge asked, the concern in their voice evident the more desperate Keith seemed to get. He couldn’t help it though, the thought of being left alone again was the last thing he wanted. What if that monster came back? Decided he wanted more from him than previously planned? He couldn’t stay here on his own, but he certainly didn’t have it in him to go anywhere else when his whole body ached and trembled. 

Pidge breathed in carefully, the sound of their little feet hammering down the stairs reeling Keith back into reality. “Keith?”

“Please, stay with me.” Keith managed pathetically, like the snively little idiot he felt like he was in that moment. He should have just called the cops. Why didn’t he call the cops?

“Okay, you got it. I won’t hang up, I’ll be right here the whole way. I’m getting in my car right now, you hear me? I’m not even stalling, no procrastinating Pidge today, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Pidge promised him, relentlessly rambling on in a way they weren’t inclined to do normally unless it was about science or something equally as important to them. Keith closed his eyes, squeezing the phone impossibly tighter. “You’re alright, breathe with me. I love you, you’re gonna be okay, try to focus on my voice.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is at the hospital with Pidge and gets an unexpected visitor. A little bit of unnecessary backstory between Shiro and Keith because broganes is my SHIT, and you can pry it out of my cold dead hands. Thanks.

If Keith was being perfectly honest, riding in Pidge’s passenger seat to the hospital with blood, tears, and snot crusted to his face was probably the lowest point in his life.

They stayed on the phone the entire trip, just like promised, and as the minutes ticked by Keith slowly came back to himself enough to start answering Pidge’s worried rambling as it filtered through the phone speakers. Then when they saw each other and ended the call, Keith ended up losing the ability to speak all over again. Pidge had ran to him as fast as their short legs could carry them, in borderline hysterics as they kneeled in front of his shaking form. Their hands squeezed his, their eyes raked slowly over his face, and Keith began to cry all over again just like that.

Pidge hauled him into the passenger seat of their Jeep, mumbling encouragement and praise like they were trying to coax a stray dog into their vehicle rather than a person. They even leaned over him to buckle his seat belt like he was somehow incapable, something that Keith would have protested vehemently in any other state of mind… but in his current one he was too petrified to say a word.

The hospital waiting room was a close second lowest point in his life. People were staring in his direction with morbid curiosity, turning to whisper to one another about his disheveled state. He didn’t even want to know what they were assuming about him, only curled up smaller in his seat and tried to concentrate on Pidge rambling on about the dumb magazine in their hands.

Eventually, they gave up on reading it _and_ distracting Keith, going straight in for the blatant comforting that Keith would never allow in his right state of mind. This time? He simply leaned into it when Pidge ended up settling an arm around his shoulders, didn’t protest as their hand settled atop his head and began trying to smooth out his disastrous hair.

The cops Pidge had called to the scene showed up not much later, asking Keith a variety of questions that he had to stutter and mumble his way through. Pidge held his hand the entire time, butting in with any information they could supply to take the spotlight off Keith. The cops thanked them for their time and assured them that justice would be served, like some kind of cheesy action movie.

Keith didn’t feel entirely present for any of it, he felt deliciously numb now that the raw panic had subsided enough to leave him feeling even more exhausted than before all of this had happened. He wasn’t sure that his body was even physically capable of processing emotions when it was so tired down to the core.

The doctor called Keith in eventually, and despite how little he wanted to give up the comfort of having a friend near him, he begged Pidge to wait in the waiting area just outside the clinic room. His heart was racing in his chest and his palms felt indescribably sweaty, panic setting in heavily as he crawled up onto that paper-covered hospital bed and _waited_.

He waited for the doctor to come into the room and look at him, to instantly point a finger in his direction and tell him he wasn’t _normal_ anymore. He waited through the doctor testing his temperature, examining his wound, and drawing blood, poised and ready to run if one of the tests somehow came back deeming him a monster. He had to bite down on his tongue to keep from crying as the doctor read him his results, only really relaxing once he was guided back to his feet.

Keith left with an assurance that he had tested _clean_ for any possible diseases he could have caught through the bite and that all of his vital signs _seemed_ to be normal. And when the doctor told him this and asked him to leave, he’d grabbed the woman by her white sleeve and asked her plain as day if there was _anything_ out of the ordinary about his results. She looked at him with confusion for a long moment, before assuring him that all of his tests came back exactly as they should have for a healthy twenty year old man.

He tried to tell himself that that had to be enough as he walked back to where Pidge was sitting in one of those obnoxiously bright plastic chairs. It had to be enough. Surely, if he had somehow been turned into a _monster_ , the doctor would have been able to pick-up on some fundamental change to his DNA. It was probably all a joke, a sick man trying to mess with his head and make him feel more vulnerable. There was no reason to believe that pathetic excuse for a person that had assaulted him, none whatsoever.

He approached Pidge feeling relief settling in tentatively, thankful when they looked up and rose to meet him halfway. They dropped their magazine, bouncing over and pulling him into a hug.

“What’s the verdict? You got rabies or nah?” They asked, grinning cheekily up at him. Keith laughed, a stiff and uneasy laugh, but there was emotion behind it rather than the endless emptiness he’d been experiencing for the last hour and that was more than he’d been expecting. It was apparently more than Pidge had been expecting too, given the visible relief that washed over their features.

“Rabies free.” Keith assured them, holding up his hands and waving them around ridiculously. He was so overtired it hurt and he wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed, he couldn’t take this day seriously any longer. “Yay.”

“That’s good, I was kinda hoping the results would come back saying you’d been turned into an X-Men mutant, but-”

“Screw off.” Keith grumbled, giving them a playful shove. It hit a little bit closer to home than he would have liked, the idea of being turned into a mutant, but he brushed it off. He was being paranoid over nothing like usual, there was no way. “You ready to head out?”

“Well, about that…” Pidge trailed off, looking up at him with a wry little grin. Keith had seen this smirk many times before, knew that it meant something he wouldn’t approve of was about to happen. He inhaled gently, wondering if maybe the cops had circled back for another round of questioning and he’d be forced to sit through that before leaving.

It wasn’t entirely surprising that Keith had missed the fact that the gift shop was down the hall from the rooms they were waiting outside of. He’d been suffering from the worst anxiety of his life and was being ushered into an office by a doctor, the last thing his attention had been registering was the over-priced cliche gifts down the way.

That’s where Pidge turned to look though, slow and calculated like they were wary of how Keith would react. He followed their gaze, staring at the gift shop in confusion before turning back to Pidge. He was about to come out and ask them for an explanation, when another voice rang out over his quiet bitter one.

“Keith!” A voice rang out through the quiet hospital halls, echoing off the white walls and flooring, seemingly bouncing around the open space. Keith stiffened, turning ever so slowly to the source of the noise. His eyes widened, mouth going indescribably dry as he recognized the person barreling out of the gift shop with a bag slung over his shoulder and a drink in hand.

Vaguely, he registered Pidge snickering under their breath by his side. He made a mental note to smack them for it later.

Lance McClain was a lot of things. That shouldn’t have been a revelation, most people had enough depth to be a lot of different things. The difference was that Keith had known Lance for over a year and within the first month of knowing him, he’d dubbed the boy utterly depthless. He was loud, pretty, popular, obnoxiously full of himself. Going by what he’d heard, there wasn’t all that much that set Lance out from the rest of the vain, one-dimensional students at their school.

Keith had heard Lance’s name so many times during his first year of college that he genuinely grew to hate the guy before ever meeting him. It got to the point that even his newfound friend Pidge, who wasn’t the type to get caught up in the drama of fellow students, would come over to his apartment with stories about pranks Lance had pulled, parties he’d thrown, people he’d slept with. It all felt incredibly mundane to Keith, like generic college student gone wild sort-of stuff. He expected Lance to drop out within his first year and that’d be the end of it.

He didn’t. Lance stayed the talk of the school for their entire first year, and during that time Keith came to learn more and more about the boy (albeit begrudgingly). After realizing who exactly Lance was and what he looked like, they seemed to run into each other everywhere. Literally. Lance crashed into him four separate times during their first year, that boy was always running from one place to another, like he didn’t have a second to spare. And Keith hated it, initially because he had to stand there awkwardly while Lance apologized vehemently and picked up every single thing he’d caused Keith to drop, but later because Keith was finding it more and more difficult to deny how endearing this idiot was.

This past summer, between Keith’s first and second years as a college student, Pidge had dragged him out to a dumb house party, insistent that he had to get drunk at least once before turning twenty-one in the name of rebelling against society. Keith learnt many important lessons that night, lessons varying from the amount of alcohol he could tolerate before getting blackout drunk (answer: not much) and that there was some meaning to that saying about never judging a book by its cover.

When Pidge had disappeared and Keith was left wandering a stranger’s home barely able to navigate the crowds, being jostled between body and body as they danced to club music that rang in Keith’s ears as far too loud… a steadying arm had wrapped around Keith’s waist. Naturally, Keith had punched the guy for trying to make a move on him when he was that out of it, but luckily his drunk punches were considerably less powerful than his sober ones. He’d landed a flimsy hit to Lance’s chest and then collapsed his weight into the boy’s side, not even fully aware of who he was leaning against in that moment.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, but he could distinctly remember _the Lance McClain_ holding his hair back and relentlessly teasing him about it as he got sick into a toilet bowl. He remembered Lance forcing bottle after bottle of water into Keith’s hands while they sought out Pidge together. And after locating the gremlin and one of Lance’s friends (Allura, he’d called her), he remembered Lance driving them all home and even helping Keith into his apartment and setting him up with pain-killers on his nightstand.

Keith woke up to a pounding headache, a note on his desk signed with Lance’s signature that reminded him to take it easy, and then a slew of photos on his phone of the drunken version of himself clinging to Lance with starstruck eyes like he was spending time with a celebrity. It was embarrassing. Even more-so when Lance took it upon himself to start strolling into Shiro’s cafe each morning like clockwork for the rest of the summer, bringing Allura along with him most days, and one morning: Pidge. _Keith’s_ friend Pidge. He wasn’t sure how it’d happened exactly, but by the end of the summer, Lance had completely adopted them as _his_ friends.

Two months had passed since then and much to Pidge’s delight, Keith only found himself reverting further and further backward to that starstruck boy he’d been during his first night with Lance. The more Keith learned about Lance, the more he wanted to know. Pidge thought it was hilarious, the new coffee shop employee Hunk that Lance had hit it off with thought it was cute, and Shiro was none too subtle about the protective way he glared at Lance from behind the counter every time Keith would rush to spend his breaks with the new friend.

At the current point in time, however, Keith couldn’t think of a single person in the universe he would like to see less than Lance. He hadn’t slept all night, had napped on the static-filled couch from doom, gotten attacked, and had a panic attack, all back-to-back. He probably looked like he’d been hit by a train in that very second and he wanted to melt into the linoleum floor beneath him.

“What’s he doing here?” Keith hissed through his teeth, smiling hard as Lance grew close enough to be able to see his expression clearly. Pidge shrugged at his side, holding up a hand to wave Lance over encouragingly.

“I texted the groupchat to let everyone know what happened. Lance just so happened to be on his way to his morning workout and decided to stop by.” Pidge explained out of the corner of their mouth, digging an elbow into Keith’s side when he began to scowl in answer. “I know you’re exhausted, but if I let you act like a jerk to him you’re going to hate me for it later. Be nice. He was _worried_ about you.”

“I don’t want to see him right now, I look horrible!” Keith snapped back, zipping his lips in an instant a Lance skidded to a stop in front of him. He turned away from Pidge and gulped, eyes raking over the tracksuit that clung to Lance’s slim build. “Hey Lance.”

“Keith.” Lance breathed, sounding so oddly relieved that Keith’s gaze snapped up to blue eyes in an instant. Lance was staring at him with a mixture of deep concern and poorly-concealed anger, like he was on the brink of single-handedly hunting down the person who had hurt Keith.

He didn’t pull out a stake and go on a monster-hunting rampage though, instead he stepped closer and pulled Keith into an unexpected hug. They were friends now, sure, but they weren’t the type that were close enough to hug without a pretty heavy excuse. This was the most contact they’d ever had while Keith was sober and he desperately tried to commit it to memory. The feeling of Lance’s chest pressed tightly to his, the crisp smell of fresh laundry and citrus body wash, even the ghost of Lance’s breath over his neck.

It ended too soon, Lance pulled back with a wide grin and went back to examining Keith’s face for wounds. Keith groaned, attempting to shove him away. Lance bounced back in an instant, too close, too loud, too much. Keith’s breath stuttered helplessly in his chest. “What’s the news? You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m uh, okay.” Keith managed weakly, voice cracking like a damn prepubescent boy. He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, looking downward to the limited space between his worn boots and Lance’s shiny sneakers. “Doc says I’m disease-free, so that’s good.”

“Pidge told everyone what happened, it sounded terrifying.” Lance continued, settling a hand lightly on Keith’s shoulder and squeezing. Keith gasped inwardly, gaze drifting upward to look at Lance through the hair that’d fallen across his eyes. It was difficult to think straight with so much attention focused directly on him; Lance’s attention. They almost always had other friends to buffer between them, Lance would bounce around between conversations so quickly that Keith always had a minute to recover.

“It was! It really was. Yeah, I nearly wet my pants.” The moment the words had left his mouth, Keith cringed so hard it almost hurt. Lance looked a little confused, if not amused, a lopsided smile gracing his lips and causing Keith to wish once again that the floor would swallow him whole already. “... but, uh, I didn’t. Obviously.”

“Right.” Pidge snorted next to them, shaking their head as they slumped back into one of the waiting room seats from before. Lance stuck his tongue out at them and then grabbed Keith’s sleeve, tugging him toward the chairs until they were both settled side-by-side. Keith pulled his hands into his lap, fumbling with his fingers distractedly as he watched Lance.

Lance, who grabbed a magazine with a model on the front and whistled low under his breath, then started to skim through it. Keith resisted the urge to glare at the centerfold as Lance opened it up. It wasn’t even sexual, but the woman was gorgeous and the way Lance’s eyes were trained on the photo was enough to cause jealousy to rear its ugly head in Keith’s gut.

Lance hummed, lips pursed in deep thought. He continued the conversation almost absentmindedly, foot knocking against Keith’s to garner his attention. “I don’t blame you, I’d probably be useless in a situation like that.”

“I just did what anyone would do.” Keith chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. Lance paused, tossing the magazine back on the table and looking over at Keith with pinched expression. When Keith lifted an eyebrow in question, Lance reached over and patted his thigh.  

“Not anyone.” Lance corrected gently, biting his lip as he struggled to find the right words. “That girl was so lucky that it was you that walked by and not someone else, not a lot of people would have the guts to do what you did and stand up for her. You’re a real hero, you know that?”

Lance’s gaze was unwavering as his eyes bore into Keith’s, open with how much admiration was shining through those pretty blue irises. Keith melted back into his seat, making himself small as a deep blush heated up his face. He laughed awkwardly, rubbing his hand over his face clumsily.

“Um, thanks.” Keith mumbled, biting his lips to keep from breaking out into a giddy grin.

“You’re welcome.” Lance answered easily, leaning forward to grab the drink off the table. Keith could vaguely remember seeing it in his hands when he’d walked out of the gift shop, but he had no idea when it’d ended up on the coffee table. The insistent cough from Pidge’s direction answered his unspoken question, and also made it apparent that they expected him to share.

Lance didn’t bring the drink to his lips though, instead shoved it into Keith’s chest. Keith startled, scrambling to hold onto it and ignore the way his hands brushed against Lance’s. Lance didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, ever the touchy-feely one. After Keith had accepted the drink, an arm settled around the back of his chair. “I bought you this, figured you’d need it after working a graveyard shift and getting assaulted, that sorta thing takes a lot out of a person.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that.” Keith whispered, ignoring how happy it made him that Lance _had_ done it anyway. Pidge chuckled just a little bit too loudly at the magazine in their hands, a knowing smirk on their lips. Keith shot a glare in their direction and turned back to Lance, who was watching him expectantly.

“It’s that frappe nonsense that you always order, lactose-free with the caramel or whatever.” Keith hummed around the straw as he took an experimental sip, leaning back into his seat and feeling the heady rush of Lance’s arm almost being wrapped around his shoulders. 

He felt the loss when Lance abruptly dropped his arm, leaning forward in his seat to grab the gift shop bag from the floor. He pulled it onto his lap, digging out a small box and holding it out to Keith. “I bought you these too.”

Keith set his drink down, experimentally turning the box over in his hands. He furrowed his eyebrows together, unsurprised when Pidge snatched it out of his hands and promptly burst into laughter. Keith sighed, looking back over at Lance in confusion.

“Spongebob band-aids?”

“Yeah! You can put them over the bite so people will ask about it, you know, thinking it’s something dumb and small like a hickey, but then you get to tell them the whole horrific story. It’ll really up the shock value, you know?” Lance launched into the explanation eagerly, exposing just how much thought he’d put into this gift despite how little sense it still made.

This was one of the many sides of Lance that Keith never would have known if they hadn’t grown so close. Lance McClain, the heartthrob of their school, sex appeal extraordinaire, rumored to have slept with a professor… had just _gifted_ Spongebob band-aids totally unironically and tried to justify that.

Lance looked over at him with a wide grin, clearly quite proud of himself. “No one will be expecting the guy wearing a spongebob band-aid to be a _hero_.”

“Uh-huh.” Keith scoffed, looking over to find Pidge attempting to pry open the box. He could only assume that they’d waste them all, stick them over their phone like the obnoxious gremlin they were, so he snatched it out of their hands in record time. Pidge looked up with wide offended eyes, before a knowing glint shone through and Keith instantly knew that he was fucked. Okay, maybe he was the slightest bit protective over the first gift his crush had ever given him, no matter how stupid it was at face value.

He turned back to Lance, sighing softly. “Thanks, Lance.”

“Don’t mention it.” Lance answered easily, getting to his feet. Keith bit down on the inside of his cheek to ward off a frown, having known that it was only a matter of time before Lance took off. He did that a lot, he was the type of person that ran into you suddenly and ran off just as quickly. It was very difficult to find a promised fit into Lance’s schedule, the man was constantly busy with school and work or his other social circles… but that made it all the more special he’d come here to check on Keith.

Keith tuned back into reality rather rapidly when a finger hitched under his chin, tilting his head up from where he’d been pouting toward the floor. Lance smiled down at him and Keith couldn’t bring himself to keep from mirroring that damned beautiful expression. “I’m just glad you made it out in mostly one piece.”

“Me too.” Keith managed dumbly, hyper-aware of Lance’s fingertip sliding across his jaw for all of half a second before leaving his skin. He shivered in his seat.

“Sorry, I can’t stay long. I’ve still gotta stop by the gym and I have a class in an hour that I really don’t wanna be late for.” Lance explained hurriedly, stretching his arms high above his head almost as if preparing to jog the entire way to the gym. It wasn’t entirely unlikely, Lance had told Keith once that he went to nationals in his high school track club.

“That’s fine.” Keith answered, expecting Lance to just turn and go. Lance lingered though, grabbing Keith’s drink off the coffee table and taking an experimental sip. He pulled a face, promptly setting it back down. He’d tried Keith’s favorite drink multiple times now, surely he knew that he didn’t like it if he could remember exactly what to order at the counter… but Keith wasn’t complaining.

“We’ve got some willing guinea pigs coming in to the cosmetology studio today that are willing to risk having a student cut their hair just to save a couple dollars. I know that _I’m_ going to do a good job, but some of my classmates are _not_ ready to be trusted with scissors near a civilian’s head, oh man. I pity the fools that get stuck being _their_ project.” Lance rambled on, rocking back on his heels and grinning between Keith and Pidge alike. Pidge seemed distracted with their phone, but Keith was enamoured. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees and chin dipped into his palm. He loved when Lance talked about himself.

Lance, coincidentally, loved to talk about himself. He noticed when people were listening though, contrary to popular belief. He cast a self-conscious glance toward Pidge’s indifferent expression and cleared his throat, stepping forward to clap Keith lightly on the shoulder. “Anyway, I should head out. It was nice seeing you though, we’ll catch up tonight at Hunk’s place. Let me know how the band-aids work!”

“Okay. Bye. Lance.” Keith answered, pausing between each word before thinking of something else to tack onto the sentence. He groaned, deciding to just power through the awkwardness by not looking at Lance again until he was long gone. “Nice talking to you.”

Keith’s plan backfired as usual. Lance kneeled in front of him, sinking down until he was directly in Keith’s line of view, on his knees between Keith’s widespread legs. Keith went unnervingly still, that familiar rolling heat sweeping through him just from the way Lance was looking up at him alone. God, this dumb crush had turned him into a horny teenager all over again.

“As much as I’m proud to have a super badass friend who’s out here standing up against sexual assault and fighting the good fight, try not to get so roughed up next time, yeah?” Lance laughed, reaching up to poke Keith in the face. Keith realized belatedly that he was smiling despite himself, that Lance had poked the indent of his dimple. “I don’t wanna see you get hurt.”

“Okay.” Keith whispered, scared that if he raised his voice too much he would scare Lance away. Of course, Lance had to leave either way, but Keith couldn’t help but wallow slightly in the loss of the moment as Lance hopped effortlessly back to his feet. He turned and held out a fist to Pidge, who promptly bumped their own against it.

“Smell ya later, Pidgeon.” Lance chuckled, turning and starting down the hall. Keith stared longingly after him, eyes falling to where the tracksuit bottoms clung tight to his hips. “Keith?”

“Yes?” Keith blurted, jumping to sit up straighter and wrench his eyes back to Lance’s face. Lance was looking back at him over his shoulder, eyes alight with mischief that told Keith he’d certainly been caught, that he was never going to hear the end of it. Lance would tease him relentlessly for this, he was certain of it, and-

“Nice mustache.” Lance stated plainly, tacking on an exaggerated wink before turning on his heel and heading toward the elevators. Keith frowned in confusion and swiped the back of his hand over his upper lip, mortified when it came back with an embarrassing amount of whipped cream. He’d been drinking from a straw, how had he even managed to be so clumsy?!

“Ugh.” Pidge sighed out dramatically next to him. He turned to look at them, lifting an eyebrow ever so slowly as the residual smile faded from his face. “You’re embarrassing.”

“I thought that went pretty smoothly?” Keith tried, grabbing his drink and taking an angry sip. Pidge shook their head, getting to their feet and brushing their hands off on their jeans.

“You are the most obvious person I have ever met.” They concluded, holding a hand out to Keith. He stared blankly at their upturned palm, gulping in an attempt to swallow the drink in his mouth down. He suddenly felt indescribably nervous, worry eating away at him that maybe Lance _knew_ . Maybe he was only being so nice to him because he felt bad about it, he wanted to let him down- “The _only_ thing keeping your ass from going up in flames is the fact that Lance just so happens to be the most _oblivious_ person I’ve ever met.”

Keith exhaled slowly, grabbing their hand and allowing them to haul him onto his feet. He tucked the band-aids into the crook of his elbow and tried to finish his drink as they started toward the elevators side-by-side.

“Did you tell Shiro?” Keith asked as they stepped inside, watching as Pidge jumped at the chance to jab their fingers into the lit-up elevator buttons. They shook their head.

“I tried to, but he’s at work until this afternoon and you know he rarely even checks his phone on his breaks. The guy gets really into his coffee.”

“Yeah, he really loves his job.” Keith chuckled, remembering a time not too long ago when Shiro had been terrified of starting his own business. Keith was only slightly smug that he’d managed to play a deciding role in whether Shiro went through with it or not.

“Do you _want_ me to contact him? I can call the cafe, I’m sure he’d drop everything to come and see-”

“No.” Keith interrupted, taking a long drag through his straw. “I really don’t want to inconvenience anyone else. It’s not a big deal. I’m okay, the doctors said there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m normal.”

“Physically.” Pidge challenged, snatching the cup out of his hands before he could make anymore slurping noises. “That doesn’t mean you’re all good mentally.”

“Have I _ever_ been all good mentally? I’m an orphan with a grudge against the world and my adopted brother is a war veteran with PTSD.” Keith rattled off easily, skimming over the millions of other reasons his mental health had been far from pristine for a long while. Pidge glared at him, having already learned his tragic backstory months ago.

“You were really messed up when I found you, okay?” They insisted, stepping out of the elevator ahead of him. They speed-walked ahead, continuing to talk so Keith had to stumble to keep close enough to listen. “I’ve never seen you so vulnerable in my life, it was scary.”

“I’m sorry.” Keith responded hurriedly, feeling guilt creeping into his bones. Pidge froze, looking back at him over their shoulder.

“No. Don’t apologize.” They deadpanned, suiting him with an icy glare. It softened quickly though, as soon as they realized their point had been made. “Just… don’t brush this under the rug for the sake of convenience. It’s okay to be messed up over this and I’m going to be here for you through all of it. We’re all here for you, Keith.”

\--

Shiro was a motherly kind of person, or as their mutual friends would kindly put it, “ _smotherly_ ”. Keith had learnt early on into their relationship that one had to exercise a certain caution when sharing how they felt with Shiro, because he would always adopt their feelings as his own and do everything in his power to help. It was endearing, but also disastrous more often than not.

They’d met when Keith was in middle school, an orphan living with foster parents that cared just enough to keep him dressed-poorly and fed-mediocrely. They were exasperated with him, as almost everyone that came into his life had been for most of his youth. The agency had suggested he join a group that paired troublesome foster kids up with older teenage role models, it was supposed to give him “direction” in life.

It gave him something better. Keith was ten when he stomped his way into that meeting he had no desire to attend, and Shiro was a freshly-graduated eighteen year old sitting nervously waiting for him. Keith gave that teenager hell for tearing him away from his room for social interaction of all things, but Shiro was endlessly patient with him. Eventually, Keith got tired of fighting him, moved on to the silent treatment. The thing about being endlessly silent though, was that he couldn’t help but listen when _Shiro_ was speaking because there was nothing to distract him from it.

Before he could stop it from happening, he’d grown invested in the stories Shiro would tell. He grew attached, the first rule in the book and he’d gone and broken it. Keith could still remember the day it stopped being a one-sided conversation. He’d tuned in to what Shiro was saying, looked over at him in awed silence as Shiro explained he’d signed up to join the military and would be leaving for training within the next few months.

And Keith had been so mad, so filled with a blind fury, that he’d hauled off and hit Shiro with no explanation after months of staying purposely indifferent and silent. Shiro had sat there, slack-jawed and looking oddly hurt, when in Keith’s mind he had no reason to be. This idiot had _promised_ to be a part of his life, had become the only consistent in his life, and now he was going to leave him for some scummy war overseas?!

Keith realized in that moment that he didn’t want Shiro to leave and… somehow Shiro didn’t hit him back or get angry with him for expressing that as horribly as he had. He just accepted Keith’s pathetic one-word apology of “sorry” when he uttered it, and then things went on as if nothing had changed between them. Except Keith started talking during their meetings now, threw himself into it head over heels and practically ran into the room each time he went to spend time with Shiro.

Keith saw Shiro off the day he was deployed overseas, he stood there with a blank expression while Shiro bawled his way through his goodbye to him like the emotional mess he was. Keith hardly even reacted until Shiro turned to leave, he turned around and took a step toward the sea of strangers filing onto the boat, and then Keith had panicked. He’d launched himself forward and clung to Shiro’s leg like a toddler, begging him not to go. Shiro had turned back to him with the softest smile and assured him he’d be back for him, that they were brothers now and families always stayed together. Keith had made a snarky comment about how _his_ family hadn’t stayed together and Shiro had _hugged_ him for it, promising him ten times over that this time it’d be different.

It was different, he hadn’t been wrong about that. The months stretched out into years and Keith left that foster home for another, then another, and another. And Shiro always kept in touch, somehow managing to keep up with his frequent address changes and sending him letters that arrived months too late, but Keith couldn’t bring himself to care. When Shiro showed up in a run-down trailer park that Keith had only been calling home for all of a week, missing an arm with an “honorable discharge” plaque tucked into the suitcase he was carrying, Keith had hauled off and hit him again. Dumb Shiro, nearly getting himself killed and risking never coming home to him again, _unacceptable_.

He had a real family now. He had the kind of family that stayed.

Coincidentally, also the kind that stopped by his apartment often enough that he could recognize Shiro’s knock among a million. Shiro was the only person that would just keep on knocking when he didn’t receive an answer, uncaring whether Keith was doing something important like napping off the day from hell on his couch.

Keith slurred something unintelligible, plastering a pillow over his face to block out the sunset leaching through his blinds. Shiro understood the babbling somehow and let himself into the apartment with his spare key, stepping inside. Keith didn’t look up, but he could hear Shiro shuffling around and kicking his shoes off. Suddenly, the pillow was plucked from his face, but Keith still remained immobile and refused to open his eyes.

“You look like death.” Shiro deadpanned, poking his cheek as if one might examine an actual dead body. Keith hissed at him.

“I feel like it, too.” Keith responded bitterly, rolling over to bury his face into the armrest.

“I saw the messages after Shay came in for her shift. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I biked here as fast as I could.” Shiro explained, picking up in pace as he grew more involved. Keith swallowed, reminded vividly of what had happened earlier that morning. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Keith.” Shiro whined, sounding damn close to pleading. Keith shifted, listening to Shiro pace across the floor as his worry amounted.

“It’s fine.” Keith repeated, louder this time. “I got to the hospital just fine. Doctors say everything is normal and the police have been alerted about the creep. It’s all as resolved as it can be.”

“I love you so much, damn it, don’t ever do something so stupid again!” Shiro shouted, unsurprisingly close to tears by the sound of it. Keith exhaled slowly, a brief smile flickering across his lips as he finally lifted his head from the armrest and sought out his brother.

Shiro was sitting in the chair on the other side of the room, studying Keith with those worried eyes they’d both grown so familiar with.

Keith had gotten a similar treatment to this many times. During his gap year between highschool and college, he’d run in with a bad crowd. It wasn’t that he wanted to be around them, he definitely didn’t like them… but they were in the right place at the right time and Keith was looking for his place in the world. They reminded him of too many people from his past, the other troubled kids in foster homes that imposed on everyone in their life. He ran with it. Just like he ran home to Shiro with bloody noses, not quite “friends” seeking asylum, and a faraway look in his eyes whenever he was asked about his future.

Honestly, he was surprised it went on as long as it did looking back on it. Months passed by before Shiro sat him down and forced college applications into his hands, pleading with him to figure something else out. Keith met him halfway with an ultimatum: if he was going to take a risk with his future, then so would Shiro.

It got a rebellious Keith off the streets and it got a depressed Shiro out of his apartment, so it worked out just fine. Keith made friends at school and Shiro re-found his purpose of serving his country, this time by serving them coffee. Happy compromise. This was the first time in a long time Shiro had looked at him like that.

“How many times have you said that?” Keith snickered, kicking his boot off over the edge of the couch indifferently. He slumped back into the cushions, eyes feeling heavy again already.

“Too many times for you to keep pulling this bullshit!” Shiro shouted, his voice high and pitchy, too much emotion showing through for Keith to take him seriously. He wasn’t angry, not at all, angry Shiro was all coldness and distance. This was _anxious_ Shiro, the one that waited up well after 4am some nights for nineteen year old Keith to come home to him, the same one that slept on the floor the night Keith moved into his own apartment because he knew Keith wasn’t quite ready to be alone yet.

Keith sighed, guilt creeping through him. He sat up again, this time patting the cushion beside him. Shiro was up in an instant, crossing the room and falling onto the couch beside him, like a goofy big dog that had just been granted permission to get up on the furniture. Keith groaned, pulling a face as Shiro wrapped him up in a hug. “You’re all I have, we’re each other’s number one, you know that? We’re a family and I can’t lose you.”

“I’m right here.” Keith argued, settling a hand atop Shiro’s head and petting his hair. “You’re not gonna lose me.”

“Promise me? No more seeking out trouble.” Shiro pleaded into the collar of Keith’s shirt, pulling back to look him in the eye. Keith glared at him, the expression softening only slightly when Shiro retaliated with a mockery of the glare, reigning his expression into something steely and hard that Keith couldn’t help but laugh at. He knew when to laugh at himself.

“Trouble has a way of jumping me when I least expect it.” Keith admitted lowly, biting his lip.

“No, no excuses, you told me to take things one day at a time and try to relax, that seemed impossible with everything going on in my life. But you know what? I did it.” Shiro reminded him, pulling him in again for something that was less of a hug and more just squishing Keith’s face into his collarbone. “All of this is all because of you. I don’t know where I’d be in the recovery process if I didn’t have you here to help me through it. So don’t go awol on me now, I still need you.”

“I need you too.” Keith sighed out reluctantly, falling victim to Shiro’s sappy bullshit as usual. He propped his feet up on the coffee table, relaxing into Shiro’s vice-like hold and resigning to the fact he wouldn’t be squirming away any time soon. “I’ll always need you, you’re my big brother.”

“I love you so much.” Shiro breathed out lightly, quiet enough that Keith could have chosen to ignore it if he wanted to. Keith exhaled slowly, shrugging his shoulders in defeat.

“I love you too.” He grumbled, trying to hide his smile. “You done squeezing me to death yet?”

“Do you still wanna go over to Hunk’s tonight? We don’t have to.” Shiro asked unexpectedly, causing Keith to tense up all over again. Shiro let him go this time and Keith scrambled back onto his own end of the couch, pulling his knees up against his chest.

“I want to.” Keith insisted, not one to miss out on the weekly study sessions their friend group had. It was normally at Hunk’s place, given he was the only one that didn’t live in an apartment building or a dorm, so they could be as loud as they wanted. Most weeks it was just him, Pidge, Hunk, and usually Lance.

There were weeks where Allura would just show up with Lance though, completely unannounced but casual all the same as she settled into the lounge amongst their mess of junk food and study notes. It had been weird the first time, everyone on their best behavior around someone that seemed so far out of their friendship league. She had two degrees already, was only still taking classes because her uncle was the dean and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her future yet.

This week was slightly different than usual because Pidge’s older brother was back in town after a nasty break-up and had decided he wanted to come meet all of them. So Lance had offered (insisted) that he would drag Allura along because she was closer to Matt’s age. Then an evil thought occurred to Keith and before he could stop himself, he’d offered to bring Shiro along too. His older brother had been mooning over Allura each time she came into the coffee shop with Lance for weeks now, it was time to play matchmaker just a little bit.

“I know you want to, but I’m just saying we could stay in.” Shiro suggested, eyes drifting to the band-aid on Keith’s neck. The Spongebob band-aid. Keith sighed.

“ _You_ want to, you’ve been obsessed with Allura since the day you met her. I know you’re offering, but there’s no way you won’t hold a secret grudge against me if I somehow mess up one of your rare chances to spend time with her outside of work.” Keith insisted stubbornly, reaching over to dig his toes into Shiro’s side. The older man yelped, swatting at his foot.

“It’s not about me.” Shiro insisted, though he had that nervous blush drifting across his face that said rather plainly otherwise. Keith couldn’t blame him though, the guy hadn’t been on a successful date since _highschool_ and he was nearing thirty now. It was time for Keith to step up to the plate and become the matchmaker he’d never wanted to be.

“I need this.” Keith answered easily, as if it were the most simple fact in the world. “I need to move on and keep pretending everything is normal.”

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My social medias, if you would like to Pay Your Respects (to all the time that I've lost forever by writing this rather than all of the responsibilities I promised to do).
> 
> twitter - https://twitter.com/MelancholyMango  
> this is where i am at my messiest, but basically you can expect to see very serious rants about zootopia and a lot of photos of my pets (wiener dogs, a baby kitten, a HEDGEHOG NAMED SHIRO??? r u in or what)
> 
> tumblr - melancholymango.tumblr.com  
> this is where i reblog ten thousand photos of klance and answer the questions u guys ask me about my writing, also a good place to make requests about things you wanna see from me in the future.
> 
> wattpad - https://www.wattpad.com/user/MelancholyMango  
> this is where i post my real-person fanfiction! (i may also eventually post original fiction here, but right now it's all youtuber fics)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew are hanging out at Hunk's for their routine study session, but staying on task is difficult when tipsy Lance is determined to be as close to Keith as humanly possible and Shiro is watching the entire scene with disapproving eyes. Also, did I mention there's sexy halloween costumes? I'm raking in every cliche here, Bois.

The first time that Keith had been invited over to Hunk’s, he’d pulled up to the address given on his bike and immediately drove past it. The house was a small brick building, with potted flowers and wind chimes hanging off the porch, the sort of thing  _ adults  _ owned when they had their lives together. It didn’t look like a university student’s bachelor pad, but after doubling back in disbelief for the third time, he’d spotted Lance pulling into the driveway in his car. 

Keith had stumbled up to him and asked a dumb question about whether they had the right place, and Lance had laughed loud and pitchy. He’d slapped a hand onto Keith’s shoulder, eyes sparkling with excitement like when he was offered a chance to brag about himself. Except this time he was bragging about his friend, given he went on to explain all about Hunk’s full-ride scholarship that gave him ridiculous living wages each semester for being an “engineering prodigy”. 

Now it was Keith’s turn to proudly boast about what a genius his friend was, given this was Shiro’s first time tagging along with him. They’d taken a cab there, given it was far enough away that Shiro wouldn’t have been able to get there on his bike without exhausting himself, and that Keith’s moped could only hold one person. While Shiro went about paying their driver, Keith’s gaze drifted to the window again where he watched as Lance’s familiar black car pulled into the drive.

Keith’s eyes widened, an adrenaline rush coursing through him. He waited impatiently, watching as Lance stepped outside and walked around to the trunk of his car to grab something. Keith’s face flushed as Lance bent over to rummage around in his belongings, his plain white t-shirt riding up his back and exposing a tantalizing stretch of Lance’s skin that Keith had never seen before. He didn’t get the chance to properly enjoy it though, a hand moving into his line of view and fingers snapping inches from his face.

“Is that Lance? What is he doing?” Shiro asked, shoving Keith toward the door. Keith obeyed, only because that’s where he’d been dying to go to begin with. He stepped out onto the curbside, walking up the stone path that led to Hunk’s front door. He veered off-course last second though, walking down the driveway to lean against Lance’s car.

Lance straightened up, bringing with him a black garbage bag filled so thoroughly he nearly tumbled backward onto his ass with the weight of it. He hoisted it up so that it blocked his vision, meaning he didn’t notice Keith’s presence until he was already halfway past him. Lance blinked, wide blue eyes finding Keith’s and lighting up in recognition.

“Hey guys, check it out!” Lance beamed, balancing the weight of the garbage bag onto one arm as he grinned over at Keith. Then, he turned to Keith’s right, where Shiro had come to stand at some point during Keith’s one-track mind decision to be as close to Lance as possible, as quickly as possible.

“What is it?” Keith asked, stepping closer to Lance and ignoring the feeling of his older brother’s eyes judging his every movement. Lance seemed to be ignoring it too, or perhaps he hadn’t noticed, because he leaned in and knocked his shoulder against Keith’s as if they weren’t already close enough.

“All of the options for my Halloween costume this year!” Lance answered, stumbling forward again and starting toward Hunk’s door. Keith kept pace with him, sticking close enough that he’d be able to catch Lance if he happened to go toppling over. “I want everyone to help me pick. Allura brought hers too, it’ll be like a little fashion show.”

“Halloween is still three weeks away, I think studying like you’d planned is probably more urgent than this.” Shiro commented from behind them, his tone unreadable. Keith clenched his teeth together as Lance’s face fell, an embarrassed flush tracing the tips of his friend’s ears. Damn it, it wasn’t like they were going to get all that much studying done anyway with all these new people around. Way to be a buzzkill, Shiro.

“Oh.” Lance chuckled, low and nervous. “I mean, you’re probably right, I was just thinking if we wanted to do group costumes or anything we should plan it in advance.”

“I think it’s a great idea, Lance.” Keith spoke up gruffly, cursing his own awkwardness. He wasn’t sure what made him think he’d be able to pull that off smoothly, it wasn’t subtle in the slightest that he was trying to cheer Lance up, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. He watched as Lance slowly processed his interruption, a smile twitching at his thin lips.

“Yeah?” Lance asked, cradling the garbage bag closer to his chest. “Pidge told me you don’t like to dress up? They thought you would be the hardest person to convince.”

“Oh, no. I’ve just never had a really good costume idea before.” Keith lied through his teeth, uncaring that Shiro was behind them and would know exactly how far from the truth Keith’s words were. Keith had always been the type to pull lackluster costumes every Halloween, at first because that was all he could afford, but then later on it became something spiteful to the people that made such a big deal out of it.

Shiro didn’t call him out on his lie though, and Lance looked so thrilled that the swooping giddiness in Keith’s chest increased tenfold. 

“I can help you with that!” Lance promised him, nudging his head toward the bag of costume options in his arms. Keith cracked a smile, suddenly looking forward to Halloween for the first time this entire season.

“Yeah?” He prompted, watching as Lance nodded so quickly he feared the man’s whole body would bounce with the movement. Then Lance turned to him with a sheepish little grin. 

“Would you mind helping me with this and carrying it inside?” Lance pleaded, batting his long eyelashes in a way that made the request feel more like an offer. Keith felt like the breath had been knocked out of him and he nodded wildly, throwing his arms up without hesitation.

“No, not at all!” He insisted, maneuvering the garbage bag out of Lance’s arms and trying not to grunt at the unexpected weight behind it. Lance clapped his hands together the moment they were free, leaning closer to pull Keith into a clumsy side-hug.

“Thanks Keith, you’re such a sweetheart.” Lance sighed warmly, pressing a kiss to Keith’s cheek. It lasted all of half a second, just a quick brush of lips across skin, totally innocent in nature. It was hardly anything to balk at, yet Keith felt the same pain of longing hit him that he always suffered from whenever Lance got just a little bit too close. Though, this time it was tinged around the edges with something that seemed to burn, heat rushing through him in a way that had a deep blush painting his face before he could stop himself.

He looked away, resisting the urge to bury his face into the bag he was holding to suffocate himself. It was pathetic, how he was to the point of touch-starvation that a kiss on the cheek could make him want so much more. 

Lance bounced away, waving enthusiastically as he went. “I’m gonna go grab my make-up bag! I’ll meet you inside!”

Keith nodded dazedly after him, a goofy smile taking up residence on his lips and refusing to leave even as he started back toward Hunk’s front door. Shiro sighed heavily next to him and Keith nearly tripped as he walked up the porch steps, eyes wide as he turned to his brother.

“You shouldn’t let him do that.” Shiro muttered quietly, reaching out to ring the doorbell. Keith waited until the noise rang out in a chime before he replied, eyebrows furrowed deeply together.

“Do  _ what _ ?”

“Walk all over you just because he knows you’ll do it for him.” Shiro responded easily, plastering a smile across his face as footsteps sounded on the other side of the door in the distance. Keith scowled, looking down at the bag in his arms.

“He’s not… walking all over me.” He mumbled, biting his lip. “He has no way of knowing what I will and won’t do for him.”

“Have you  _ ever _ said no to him?” Shiro laughed knowingly when Keith only scowled even harder in answer, entire face bent up in annoyance. “Look, Keith, I’m just saying. If he knows that you like him and doesn’t feel the same, maybe he’s using that knowledge to his advantage.”

“He  _ doesn’t  _ know.” Keith grumbled, growing increasingly more irritated. He was rushing to speak now, the words tumbling past his lips in his rush to finish this conversation before the door opened in front of them.

“What makes you so sure?” Shiro asked out of the side of his mouth, smile never once faltering. Keith kicked his shoe against the welcome mat beneath his feet, shrugging his shoulders.

“He just… doesn’t.” Keith insisted, though even as he said it aloud his thoughts on the matter were starting to get jumbled up. He’d never had any reason to believe that Lance knew, there was no point in their friendship where Lance had acted weirdly around him and no one else had even hinted that Lance might have caught onto him. Surely someone as talkative as Lance wouldn’t have had a realization like that only to keep it to himself?

Shiro nodded solemnly next to him, patting Keith on the shoulder in a show of reassurance. Keith shrugged the embrace away, still lost in his own spiralling thoughts. The door knob turned in front of them and Shiro exhaled gently.

“Just be careful, you know he has a reputation.” Shiro whispered, insistent on having the final word. An urge to defend Lance rose up in Keith, but he quickly squashed it down. He couldn’t deny the obvious, he’d known Lance’s reputation long before he knew him personally. Sure, there was a lot more to him than his reputation, but Keith had yet to  _ disprove  _ any of the rumors he’d heard about Lance.

The door swung back and revealed a grinning Pidge, a lollipop stick hanging out of the corner of their mouth. They waved, gesturing Keith and Shiro inside.

“Come on, you guys are late.” They muttered, disappearing back down the hall. Shiro looked slightly unnerved by the anticlimactic greeting, but Keith felt right at home as he kicked his boots off and lugged the garbage bag further into the house. Shiro followed quietly after him, until they both reached the lounge and Keith was dropping the bag onto the couch. Pidge moved to inspect it immediately.

“What’s all this weird shit?”

“Lance’s costumes.” Keith answered simply, skipping out on giving Shiro a proper introduction to Allura in favor of sitting down in his usual spot on the couch and sulking. He couldn’t get the idea out of his head now that Shiro had brought it up, the idea that Lance could be using him for his own personal gain, just because he could get away with it. Keith knew it couldn’t be true, even if Lance knew about his feelings he wouldn’t use them to his advantage like that. He was a good guy, how many people he slept with didn’t change that.

“The party has arrived!” Lance bellowed as he swung around the doorframe, hitching his leg around it as if it were a stripper pole. Hunk chastised him quietly, but also dropped the book he was reading to rush over and pull Lance into a hug. 

“Allura got here twenty minutes ago, though?” Pidge responded cheekily, sticking their tongue out at Lance as they made eye contact over Hunk’s shoulder. The scandalized look that passed over Lance’s features was priceless, his eyes flickering to where Allura sat atop the counter talking to Matt.

“Screw you!” Lance hissed, wiggling his way free of Hunk’s hold and rushing over to point an accusatory finger directly into Pidge’s face. “I brought a box of mini chocolate bars and everything for you guys, show some respect!”

“Did you say chocolate?” Pidge grinned, eyes glinting with interest behind their glasses. Lance nodded stubbornly, dropping the much smaller grocery bag in his hands onto the floor. Inside was a bright case that Keith recognized as Lance’s make-up bag he dragged with him everywhere, and then a box labeled with ten different flavors of chocolate bar. Pidge outright moaned. “Suddenly you’re my best friend and I worship the ground you walk on.”

“That’s more like it.” Lance concluded warmly, placing his hands on his hips. He turned suddenly, as if hit by an afterthought as he watched Pidge bite down into two different chocolate bars at once. He looked back at Hunk. “They didn’t have your favorite kind in this mix, so I just bought you this full-sized bar separate.”

“Lance, you didn’t have to get me something special, I’m not that picky.” Hunk chuckled bashfully, yet he rushed over to eagerly accept the bar Lance was holding out to him. Lance pulled it back to his chest last second though, suiting Hunk with a steely look.

“You’re the most special person in my life, of course I had to!” Lance burst out suddenly, throwing an arm around Hunk’s shoulders and hanging off of him as he went about eating the chocolate. After that, Lance made his rounds to greet everyone individually, even went out of his way to drag Allura over to where Shiro was awkwardly standing next to Keith. 

Meanwhile, Keith stewed in the anxious thoughts swirling around in his head. He realized how dumb he was being, taking Shiro’s opinion into consideration when his brother knew so little about Lance. It was just so easy to believe when so many people he’d made the mistake of trusting in the past _ had _ ended up using him. Shiro was terrified of it happening again, looked at everyone with a predisposed grudge until they proved that their intentions with his baby brother were pure. 

Keith shouldn’t have let it unnerve him so much, he knew Lance well enough to know it was a senseless concern. It was just impossible  _ not _ to think about it, not when his friendship with Lance had felt like an impossible fever dream from the very beginning.

He looked up, watching as Lance wrapped an arm tightly around Allura’s waist and rested his head on her shoulder, smiling up at Shiro.

“Allura, I’d like to introduce you to the second hottest person in Keith’s family.” He offered, grinning when Shiro clumsily extended a hand out between them. Allura shook it, raking her eyes over Shiro with much more interest than she ever had during their visits to the cafe. Keith could practically feel Shiro’s nerves acting up, could smell the sweat on his palms from here, and— _ wait a second _ .

“There are only two people  _ in _ our family.” Keith snapped coldly, suddenly wondering if Lance was such a good friend after all if he’d forgotten that fact. He realized his mistake quickly though, as everyone in the room turned to look at him with expressions varying from fondness to annoyance that he was feeding into Lance’s behavior.

“Look at you, capable of simple math.” Lance cooed, leaning over the back of the couch to twirl the hair at the base of Keith’s neck around his finger. Everyone else snickered softly while Keith erupted into a blush, stuttering gibberish in an attempt to make himself look less hopeless than he felt in that moment.

Lance leaned over him further, resting his chin atop Keith’s head and looping his arms around his neck loosely. “He’s got brains  _ and  _ beauty, this one.”

“Shut-up.” Keith grumbled, folding his arms over his chest defensively. After Shiro and Allura drifted back over to the kitchen with Matt, Lance hopped over the back of the couch when Hunk wasn’t looking and collapsed next to Keith. Keith went rigid, staring wide-eyed at Lance.

“This seat taken?” Lance asked casually, looking over at him. Keith shrugged.

“No.”

“Good.” Lance concluded, leaning forward to grab a mini chocolate bar off the table. He unwrapped it absentmindedly, biting a chunk off before looking expectantly back to Keith. “So?”

“Uh, what?”

“How did the band-aids work? I noticed you were wearing one.” Lance explained, using his free hand to reach over and ever-so-gently brush a fingertip around the bruise circling the band-aid. Keith gulped, leaning into the touch without thinking, only to curse when it put too much pressure on his bruise. Lance gave him an inquisitive little smile. “Did anyone ask about it?”

“No.” Keith huffed, slowly beginning to chase away his thoughts in favor of enjoying the moment with Lance’s undivided attention on him. “I think most of my classmates already regard me as the weird kid, there’s nothing I could do at this point that would strike them as all that odd. It’d take an awful lot for any of them to risk talking to me.”

“Really?” Lance asked, dropping the second chocolate bar he’d picked up. Keith wasn’t sure what to make of his shocked expression.

“What? You didn’t know?”

“No, I thought you were like… a  _ cool  _ guy.” Lance explained, eyes locking with Keith’s as if trying to figure out whether he was lying for some reason. He looked genuinely surprised, like he was struggling to come to terms with the fact Keith had been a giant lameass all this time. It wasn’t like they ever spent time together on school grounds. “You know, the badass biker kid that wears leather jackets and doesn’t give a fuck about what people think about him.”

“Oh no, you’re mistaken, I give  _ many _ fucks.” Keith said dismissively, eyes widening when Lance snorted next to him, then promptly burst into laughter. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

“No.” Lance managed weakly, doubling over into Keith’s chest. “You’re just cute, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Keith breathed heavily, settling a tentative hand on Lance’s back. “Er, thanks, I guess.”

“It’s a compliment, trust me.” Lance assured him, straightening up when Pidge began to glare in his direction for distracting them from their work. He sunk back into the cushions, throwing his legs over Keith’s lap and yawning loudly. “Well, I don’t know how much my opinion is worth to you, but _ I  _ still think you’re a pretty cool guy.”

Keith really didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. That was the thing, Pidge was sitting on the floor just a few feet away and they were surely eavesdropping, they’d tease him relentlessly the next time they were alone together if he got too invested in what Lance was saying. It was just so rich though, the coolest person Keith had ever met trying to tell him that they saw him as something even close to the same.

“You don’t think I’m weird?” Keith whispered, tearing his gaze away from his lap. Lance had closed his eyes at some point, but he cracked them open to squint over at Keith.

“Well, no, you  _ are  _ pretty weird.” Lance chuckled, kicking his foot against Keith’s thigh. “I’ll never forget that night you drunkenly tried to convince me that Mothman was real and would probably make a good friend. That was very weird.”

From the floor, Pidge burst into laughter. Keith had been expecting that, they were definitely the eavesdropping type. What Keith hadn’t been expecting was for Hunk to stifle a few giggles of his own, and for the older crowd in the adjacent kitchen to break down into hysterical cackling. Keith sighed, sinking further down the couch.

“Pfft, you literally drew him a venn diagram sorting out all the evidence of Mothman being real and all the evidence against it. Then in the overlap in the middle you just put your own conspiracy theories as to why the evidence contradicted because the government was trying to cover their own tracks.” Pidge was gasping now, rolling around on the carpet and sending their notes scattering across the floor. Keith simply pouted harder, his frown only fading when Lance casually threw an arm across the back of the couch behind him. It was just like early in the hospital waiting room.

“God, he was so invested.” Lance chuckled, shaking his head fondly. “What was that? The second time you’d ever drank?” 

“You guys remember that, huh?” Keith grumbled, resisting the urge to hide his face behind his hands in embarrassment. Pidge slowly composed themselves, burying their face into the armrest of Hunk’s chair and concentrating on taking deep breaths.

Lance leaned forward suddenly, making sure Keith was focused on him.

“So, definitely weird… but I’d be insulted if you didn’t think the same about me.” Lance’s voice was so warm and smooth, Keith felt like he was being lulled to sleep. It didn’t help that he’d been forced to look Lance in the eye, that the close proximity meant he could count every shade of blue that swirled in those pretty irises. “Being weird is a good thing, it gives you character, makes you stand out. There are way too many people I know that try to play it as safe as they can, be as “normal” as they can be, it’s boring. At least you act how you want to, not how you think you should.”

“I guess.” Keith dismissed, looking down between them. Lance’s arm dropped from the back of the couch, settling securely around Keith’s shoulders and squeezing him closer.

“It doesn’t matter how many fucks you actually give, the point is you don’t change yourself for the sake of making anyone else happy.” Lance finished, fingertips tracing bare skin just below the sleeve of Keith’s t-shirt. Keith gulped, unable to focus on anything but the fact that Lance was _ touching _ him. His heart raced unbearably in his chest. “You’re just brave like that.” 

“Lance,” Keith started uncertainly, voice shaky with poorly-concealed want. He turned ever so slowly, eyes finding Lance’s mere inches away. He swallowed harshly, a sudden all-encompassing need hitting him to pull the other boy closer and kiss him hard like he’d been dying to do for months now. His fist unfurled at his side, drifting upward on its own accord, closer and closer still to the front of Lance’s shirt...

“Lance, what is this?” Keith blinked dazedly, startled as Lance’s head whipped to look over his shoulder at Allura. She was holding up some kind of outfit, presumably one of the ones Lance had brought with him. Keith couldn’t really make sense of all the straps, but Lance lit up with recognition in an instant.

“It’s a sexy milk maid outfit, I wore that one in highschool when I worked part-time on a farm!” Lance beamed proudly, scrambling to lean over the back of the couch and reach for it. Allura laughed, dropping it into his hands in defeat. Lance spun around, holding it up to his chest. “I wonder if it still fits.”

“I am begging you, do not put that piece of… clothing on your body.” Hunk pleaded, exchanging a look with Shiro that made it clear to the newcomer just how much the rest of the group disapproved of Lance’s antics. That wasn’t enough to stop them from happening though.

“Nope, too late, I’m doing it.” Lance insisted, jumping to his feet and fisting the costume above his head proudly as he walked. “You can’t stop me, Hunk. None of you can.”

“Oh no.” Hunk groaned miserably, tossing his textbook aside to sink down in his seat and wait for the inevitable. Allura crossed the room to sit on the armrest of Hunk’s chair and Shiro came to stand behind her, Matt following after him with a snicker. At least someone was amused by Lance’s nonsense, maybe they had similar senses of humor.

Keith didn’t find it funny at all. In fact, somehow he found it even less funny than not funny at all when Lance barged back into the room. That strappy thing from earlier? Turns out that was a corset. And as if that wasn’t Keith-killing material enough, the bottoms of the outfit happened to be a plaid skirt so short that the majority of Lance’s thighs were on display.

“Bam!” Lance exclaimed, kicking his leg into the air just high enough to show a flash of colorful underwear beneath the skirt. He held his hands up, making a motion that Keith could only dread the explanation for. Lance looked around the room with a smirk. “Who wants to get  _ milked _ ?”

“I am… going to throw you off the balcony.” Pidge deadpanned, sounding like they were resisting the urge to vomit. Lance just rolled his eyes at them though, spinning around and curtsying.

“Aw, come on, don’t play so hard to impress.” He drawled, adopting something that sounded like an utter butchering of a Texan accent. He sashayed his hips as he walked over to Allura, draping himself over her front and squealing when she nearly stepped out from supporting him. He straightened back up, winking at her. “You know you like it.”

“We really don’t.” Allura huffed, rolling her eyes at him. He pouted, walking around to throw a leg onto the chair in front of Hunk.

“Look at these legs!” Lance shouted, gesturing to the whole of them. Hunk leaned closer, as if trying to figure out what he was supposed to be looking at. “Feel them, feel how smooth they are, I waxed tonight.”

“His legs are smooth, I’ll give him that.” Hunk mumbled, running his palm over Lance’s calves, who seemed to utterly preen under the attention. He ran a hand through Hunk’s hair, mussing it up appreciatively.

“Thank-you, Hunk.” He beamed, bringing his leg back to the floor. “This is why you have stolen the title of “best friend” from Allura until further notice.”

“Hey!” Allura scoffed, clearly outraged. “I’ve known you way longer than him!”

“Sorry, compliments talk, and Hunk has an endless supply to give.” Lance dismissed her with a wave of his hands, ignoring the bitter glare that followed him as he danced back toward the bathroom. And Keith watched him all the while, eyes glued to his curves, mouth starch dry, hands curling into fists at his sides with the longing to touch. For a fleeting, beautiful moment Keith believed that maybe Lance would leave just like that, go change back into his regular clothes that only rendered Keith partially-speechless. 

Clearly, that was wishful thinking.

“What do you think, Keith? You’re being awfully quiet over there.” Pidge called out pointedly, snickering devilishly as Keith’s eyes widened with genuine fear. Lance spun around immediately, face lighting up with an idea. 

“Oh yeah, Keith!” He laughed, prancing over to the couch and collapsing onto it next to Keith. Keith’s eye twitched in protest as he physically restrained himself from looking to where Lance’s skirt had fallen just slightly higher than before. Lance sat up, leaning closer to Keith and settling a hand on his inner thigh, not even moving or squeezing, just the weight of it settled there. Keith gulped. “Is this making your inner Texan farmboy go wild? Is it every fantasy you’ve ever had wrapped up into one?”

“No.” Keith blurted, his voice short and clipped. He shoved Lance’s hand off of him, jumping to his feet and making a beeline for the balcony doors before he even had a chance to catch his breath. He spoke to no one in particular as he pushed the door open. “I’m going to step outside and get some air.”

No one protested, so Keith didn’t look back. He rushed out and closed the door behind himself, trying to even out his breathing as he looked out over the view of the river behind Hunk’s house. He ran his hands over his face, trying to distract himself from the traitorous heat pooling southward. It didn’t necessarily help when his phone vibrated in his phone pocket, so he fished it out in record time to glare at the offending text message.

He couldn’t honestly say he was surprised to see it was from Pidge.

From: Pidge. Sent: 8:23pm

_ “Wow, good one, cowboy. That wasn’t obvious to everyone in the room or anything. At least try to keep it in your pants… or should I say keep your gun in your holster? At this rate you’re gonna shoot off prematurely, if u kno what i mean. Yeehaw.” _

Keith stared blankly at the text for thirty seconds. Eventually, the words on the screen started to blend together and he simply shoved his phone back into his pocket. He grumbled bitterly, leaning against the balcony railing and cursing himself vehemently. What was _ wrong  _ with him?

He stayed exactly where he was until his head came back to him, his thoughts clearing and the fuzzy warmth that’d been chasing through his veins ebbed away. He didn’t want to seem dramatic, but he could have sworn there was something different about this compared to normal arousal. Maybe that was just the reality of seeing your crush playing sexy dress-up, it’s not like he’d any many similar experiences to compare it to, but this heat almost seemed to gnaw away at his insides.

“Keith?” He recognized Lance’s voice the moment after the door slid open, but he didn’t answer him right away. He wasn’t sure he had the words to say. He was sure that he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye again so soon. He’d really gone and blown it this time, there was no way Lance didn’t know now and he was probably sent out here to let him down easy. “You okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” Keith answered hurriedly, the words merging into one continuous jumble as he rushed to get them out. A small selfish part of him hoped that maybe that would be enough to sate his friend, that Lance would leave it at that and just go rather than dwelling on what had happened. He realized it wasn’t realistic, that Lance deserved some kind of explanation… but it seemed preferable to whatever was about to happen between them.

“You’ve been out here for over ten minutes.” Lance argued carefully, moving to stand next to Keith. Their hands settled dangerously close on the balcony railing, pinkie fingers practically touching. Still, Keith was stubborn about not looking at him. “Look, I just wanna say-”

“Lance, don’t make a big deal out of-”

“No, I want to talk about it.” Lance cut him off, sounding uncharacteristically serious. Keith paled considerably, preparing himself for the final blow. This was gonna suck. He’d have to go back in there and explain to Shiro that they had to leave, right now, and then his brother would get that big dumb  _ “I told you so” _ look on his face. It was nightmare fuel.

Lance shifted awkwardly next to him, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable just now. I know that not everyone is comfortable with showing that much skin or talking openly about sexuality as a whole, I wasn’t even thinking when I decided to flaunt it in your face like that. I didn’t mean to make you feel uneasy or gross you out or anything. Wow,  _ Lance _ , what a surprise, not everyone wants to see your whole ass  _ ass  _ on display.”

And with that, Keith was hit with the most staggering wave of relief he’d ever experienced in his entire life. He straightened up, looking over at Lance with wide eyes filled with disbelief, wondering if he was somehow mistaken. Lance didn’t look like he was lying though, he looked genuinely ashamed of himself, the furthest thing from annoyed or unnerved by Keith. 

“I didn’t mind.” Keith blurted without thinking, still high on the idea that Lance didn’t jump directly to assuming the obvious. Lance looked over at him, a tight-lipped frown on his face.

“No?”

“I mean, it’s your body, you can flaunt it as much as you want.” Keith went on to elaborate, stuffing his hands into his pockets and shrugging. Lance raked his eyes over him, as if looking for something in his expression. Keith tried to remain unreadable. Lance sighed.

“Well, yeah, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of you being comfortable around me.”

“It wasn’t the costume or the lines that made me uncomfortable, it was more having everyone looking at me and waiting on a reaction.” Keith admitted, not exactly lying. If, for some strange reason, Lance was dancing around in a costume and asking for Keith’s approval when there _ weren’t _ five other people in the room… well, Keith might not have been so opposed to it.

“Oh.” Lance breathed, wringing his hands together nervously. “Social anxiety stuff, right.”

“Yeah.” Keith agreed.

“Well, in that case, I guess you’ll have to continue enduring my half-naked body.” Lance laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. Keith hummed, turning to smile at him reassuringly. He didn’t want Lance to second guess himself just because  _ he _ couldn’t keep it under control. He wanted Lance to stay exactly how he was, outrageousness and boldness included.

“Guess so.” Keith whistled, feigning indifference on the matter. Lance shoved him, chuckling as he slowly warmed back up to his usual self. They fell into a brief silence after that, but a comfortable one that had Lance plastered to Keith’s left side so close it was difficult to tell where one started and the other ended.

“Thanks, Keith.” Lance responded eventually, reaching out to settle his hand over Keith’s on the railing and squeeze. “I knew I was right about you, you  _ are _ a cool guy.”

“You’re pretty cool, too.” Keith managed, voice choked and breathy. Lance dropped his hand, stretching it high above his head instead as he turned away.

“We’d love for you to join us whenever you’re ready.” He concluded, the sound of the door opening following not long after. “I’ll save you a seat.”

\--

Things had calmed down considerably by the time Keith stepped back into the room. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was because it happened naturally, or because Shiro was standing menacingly in the corner with Allura and Matt and watching them all closely. Either way, everyone had settled into their usual spots, and even Lance had dug a textbook out of his bag and was flipping through it under the pretense of studying. The only thing out of the ordinary in the entire room was the alien antennae headband that Hunk had adopted while he was gone, probably stolen from Lance’s costume collection.

Keith walked quietly into the room, no one looking up at him as he moved toward his earlier spot next to Lance. He figured no one had even noticed his presence, but when he went to sit down, Lance lifted the edge of the blanket he had thrown across his lap. Keith settled beneath it, peering over Lance’s shoulder and sneering at all the chemistry going on on the page. He opted for grabbing his own books instead, bringing his legs up onto the couch and making himself comfortable beneath the blanket.

Hours passed by and they opted to order a pizza, which inevitably translated to needing something to drink with it. That was how Keith ended up sitting next to tipsy Lance, a demon he’d grown particularly familiar with over time. The moment alcohol was brought out of the fridge, the older three had conveniently disappeared out onto the balcony, leaving Keith to fend for himself.

Lance was leaning his head on Keith’s shoulder now, making the occasional comment on the book in Keith’s hands. It wasn’t anything particularly insightful, it was mostly pointing out the ugliest person, animal, or diagram and comparing it to Keith every few pages. Lance found himself to be particularly amusing tonight and Keith couldn’t stop himself from giggling right along with him.

They’d had three things thrown at them now, Pidge begging them intermittently to shut-up already because other people were trying to study. Keith would have felt bad, but it was hard to feel much of anything at all but warmth when Lance was cuddled into his side so casually.

“Hey.” Lance whispered, poking Keith in the chest. In a desperate bid to just finish reading the page he was on, Keith turned away from Lance and hurriedly tried to get through it before another interruption happened. Lance didn’t take kindly to that, grabbing the book out of his hands entirely and tossing it onto the floor. Keith was genuinely irked by that and probably would have lashed out at him, if it weren’t for the fact that Lance promptly replaced the book’s space on his lap with his head.

Keith blinked owlishly, staring down at where Lance had draped himself across his thighs. A blush heated up his face and Lance seemed indifferent, stretching out like a cat that had gotten its way. “Did you even hear me? _ I said _ : hey.”

“What?” Keith demanded, eyes flitting around the room and trying to decipher if anyone else had noticed their position yet. He would never hear the end of it if Pidge noticed Lance laying in his lap, it would be unbearable.

“I think Allura and your brother are hitting it off.” Lance explained, pointing toward the glass balcony doors with a smug grin. Keith followed his line of view, surprised to find Allura, Matt, and Shiro all sitting on the ground and looking out over the cityscape. Occasionally, as he watched them, Allura would throw her head back and laugh. Shiro’s face when she did that probably looked awfully similar to the one Keith was making right now, as he turned back to Lance. “That’s her real smile, by the way. I can tell when she’s using a fake one to get someone to stop talking to her.”

“Good.” Keith stated plainly, attempting to squirm out from beneath Lance before they caught anyone’s attention. “I’m happy for them.”

“They can wear a couple’s costume for Halloween!” Lance exclaimed suddenly, his voice a harsh whisper as he tried his best to be mindful of the people studying a few steps away. Keith prayed that he’d been just quiet enough, but it was in vain. Pidge looked up with a growl, clearly intending to chastise them for the fourth time that night, but their expression softened quickly. Keith locked eyes with them and they winked, pulling a kissy face. 

Meanwhile, Lance had gone off on a tangent about all the things Shiro and Allura could go as for Halloween this year. “God and goddess! It’s perfect!”

“I don’t know that they’ll agree with you on that.” Keith sighed, giving in to the inevitable teasing and slumping against the couch. He made no effort to move Lance, who stayed resting in his lap like he somehow belonged there.

“Sure they will.” Lance argued, rambling on about all the reasons it’d make a perfect costume for them, reasons that he claimed weren’t purely for the aesthetic of it. And against all odds, Keith found himself listening to the one-sided conversation he truly couldn’t care less about. Pidge had been right, he wasn’t a costume person, never had been. It seemed like something irrelevant to make such a big deal over, but the moment Lance got that animated look in his eyes and started rambling, Keith’s pride flew out the window.

Eventually, Lance tired himself out. He sat up, using his grip on Keith’s bicep for leverage. “You want a drink or something? I’m gonna go grab a refill.”

“Yeah, bring me back a glass of water.” Keith managed simply, the Mothman tale still fresh in his mind now. He wasn’t about to get drunk and make an idiot of himself all over again, even if Shiro was here to bring him home this time.

“You got it.” Lance hummed easily, jumping to his feet and heading to the fridge. The moment he’d turned his back, Pidge had scrambled across the floor and taken his spot. They leaned into Keith’s side repeatedly, attempting to crush him under their weight.

“What were you guys whispering about?” They chuckled smugly, wiggling their eyebrows. “It looked  _ awfully _ interesting, you didn’t take your eyes off of him once the  _ whole _ time.”

“Allura and Shiro.” Keith answered honestly, keeping his voice unreadable. Pidge searched his face for a long moment, before concluding that he wasn’t lying. They groaned, snatching the blanket off his hips and draping it over themselves like a ghost.

“Boring.” They grumbled bitterly, looking up as Lance shimmied his way through the space between their feet and the coffee table. He handed Keith his drink, smiling in such a personable way that Keith was half tempted to shove Pidge off the couch just so Lance could have the spot next to him back.

Pidge must have been able to read his mind though, because something evil sparked in their eyes in that moment, as they watched Lance tip back the bottle in his hands. “Hey Lance?”

“Yeah?” He asked, surveying his limited options on the couch before plopping down onto Keith’s lap without hesitation. Keith choked on the water he’d been drinking, struggling not to spit it out across the back of Lance’s neck.

“Truth or dare?” Pidge spoke, grinning something wicked as the room erupted into groans of protest. It was a known fact that Lance never turned down a dare, or a truth, or any kind of competition where he had to prove himself in any way at all. He was disgustingly prideful, would rather eat his own foot than be called a chicken. And Pidge, mastermind that they were, always had the nastiest things to urge him into.

Hunk had set his book down and was forlornly watching the exchange, undoubtedly knowing what was about to happen. Pidge was grinning so hard Keith feared their teeth might shatter. Keith himself was attempting to juggle the boney and annoyingly squirmy boy in his lap without making things real awkward, real fast. And Lance looked contemplative, stroking an imaginary beard that he clearly didn’t have.

“Dare.” Lance opted for in the end, looking almost excited to hear what the sentence would be. Pidge blinked at him before punching him in the shoulder.

“No, you’re supposed to pick truth.”

“Okay, fine, truth.” Lance corrected himself, finally settling back against Keith’s chest as he found a comfortable position. Keith could barely breathe, he was so terrified of exhaling just the wrong way and scaring Lance off. They’d been close before, Lance was a touchy-feely type of guy and there was no predicting when he’d decide to pounce on you, but with the memory of all of Lance’s smooth, tan skin on display a mere hour ago… Keith found  _ himself  _ nervously squirming.

Pidge leaned forward, as if they were about to share a grave secret.

“If you had to sleep with anyone in this room... who would you pick?” Pidge whispered, eyes flickering to Keith’s just behind Lance’s shoulder. God, it was so painstakingly obvious what they were doing, even Hunk made a strangled noise from the other side of the room. Lance simply stared back at them though, as if he was deeply considering his answer.

“Shiro, Matt, and Allura included even though they’re on the balcony?” Lance spoke finally, giving Keith a very real heart attack when he said just the first name. Finding out that Lance was attracted to his older brother before him would most definitely ruin Keith’s life.

“Yeah, sure.” Pidge answered, leaning closer to Lance eagerly as he looked around the room. He stared toward the balcony with a pensive look, then turned to Hunk and smirked, then glanced at Pidge and pulled a face, then… Keith should have known Lance was going to look at him next. He was the last person in the room, the last option, of course he was going to. 

Yet Keith was so caught-up with staring, hanging on to every single emotion that flickered across Lance’s face as if that’d give his answer away, he didn’t have _ time _ to wipe his all-invested expression away before Lance looked at him.

“Hmm…” Lance hummed dramatically, eyes glued to Keith’s wide ones. It was obvious he was hanging onto every word, but for once he was finding it very difficult to keep his face blank. Lance cast one last look around the room then landed back on Keith, giving him a pat on the face. “I choose Keith.”

“Really?” Pidge gasped, sounding all too interested. Keith was frozen in place, his thoughts running a thousand miles per hour. Had Lance chosen him because he wanted to or because he was teasing Keith for looking so invested in it? How was he supposed to know if that was a genuine answer?!

Pidge picked up on his dilemma, chuckling quietly. “What’s your reasoning, huh?”

“Well,” Lance threw an arm around Keith’s neck, pulling him into a headlock and messing his hair up with a fist. Keith attempted to hit him to the best of his ability. “I’ve never slept with someone who had a mullet before, I’m curious what mullet sex hair would look like.”

“Oh my god.” Hunk groaned from across the room, burying his face into the book in his hands. “I’m going back to studying.”

Lance was unfazed by how unimpressed everyone looked with him, simply spun around to face Keith with a grin that made it clear he was up to no good. When Pidge noticed, they went back to smiling evilly as well. He was surrounded by a bunch of gremlins, for god’s sake.

“Oh, _ Keeeeeeith _ , truth or dare?” Lance demanded, turning himself even further so he was just straddling Keith’s thighs and staring at him. Keith groaned, throwing his head back and staring blankly up at the ceiling, wondering what he’d done to deserve this.

“I’m not playing.”

“Aw, come on.” Pidge insisted, grabbing onto Keith’s shirt and shaking him wildly. He refused to look any of them in the eye. There was no way he was buying into this dumb game. He’d seen how it ended up most nights while watching from the sidelines, it wasn’t happening. It really wasn’t.

“Hey?” Lance whispered softly, hoisting himself up on Keith’s shoulders so he could stare down at the other boy from the odd angle. Keith swallowed harshly, suddenly very aware of how close their faces were as Lance’s arms wobbled as he struggled to keep himself upright each time Keith would exhale underneath him. “Please? Do it for me?”

“Dare.” Keith spluttered out, shoving Lance off of him. Lance whined loudly in protest as his face smushed into Pidge’s back, but then he was back up in a matter of seconds as he realized he’d gotten his way. He spun around, grabbing Keith’s wrist and dragging him onto his feet.

“Yes! I knew you’d do it!” Keith grimaced, thinking back to what Shiro had said earlier. Okay, so maybe he was a bit of a pushover when it came to Lance, that still didn’t mean his friend had bad intentions. It was hard to justify that when he looked back to Lance and saw those blue eyes raking over him with a menacing glint.

Lance dragged him over to the garbage bag Hunk was resting his feet on, digging into it and pulling out an armful of colorful costumes. He shoved them into Keith’s chest. “Try one of these on.”

“No fucking way.” Keith huffed, shaking his head already. He was a pushover, sure, but even Lance couldn’t convince him to take all of his clothes off… at least not for this purpose.

“Please?” Lance pleaded with him, pulling his best puppy dog eyes. Keith simply turned away before he could stare too long, determined not to give in this time. There was nothing Lance could do to make him say yes to this, he was standing by that.

“There’s a penalty for not accepting dares in this household.” Pidge spoke up suddenly, walking over to rest their chin on Keith’s shoulder. “You don’t wanna streak through this nice neighborhood, do you?”

“Sorry, Keith, we elected that rule last month when Pidge refused to drink a ketchup smoothie.” Hunk commented, flipping the page of his book indifferently. Keith shivered, looking down at the varying colors of fabric in his hands. He could feel how cheaply made they were, knew that every piece of it was probably see-through in the right lighting. Damn you, Lance.

“Fine.” Keith growled, ignoring Lance and Pidge’s cheerful shouts as he stomped into Hunk’s bathroom with a scowl. He spread the costumes out across the sink, picking up one covered in brown spots that seemed to be... a sexy giraffe costume. Keith groaned, burying his face in his hands. “How is this even a costume? It’s basically underwear!”

“Come on, we wanna see!” Lance yelled back, cackling wild like he only did when he was starting to feel the effects of the alcohol. Keith oped for the sleek black material, grabbing it up and scowling at the outfit in his hands. It was black, at least, that part hadn’t been falsely advertised. It also had shorts rather than underwear (though they were probably shorter than the boxers he normally wore), a spandex strappy crop-top with a bold white “FBI” printed onto the breast, and a slew of accessories he wasn’t sure if he was going to bother with. 

Why did Lance wear this shit?!

Resigned to his fate, he kicked his current clothes off and slipped into the new attire. It was actually more like suffocating himself in the new attire, he certainly didn’t slip right into the body-hugging spandex. He groaned, opting for one accessory only and shoving the ballcap onto his head. The fishnet stockings and toy gun could stay exactly where they were, thank-you very much.

He cautiously creaked the bathroom door open, taking a deep breath before creeping around the doorframe. Everyone was already staring, including the three people that had joined them again after their rendezvous outside. Shiro had never looked so disapproving in his life and Keith had crawled home with two sprained ankles once.

“I crave death.” Keith stated simply, blatantly avoiding looking in Lance’s direction. Pidge was running up to him in a second, laughing wildly as they pulled their phone out.

“Keith in short-shorts, oh my god.” Pidge cackled, collapsing onto him for support. “I’m taking a photo.”

“No!” Keith hissed, doing his best to cover his exposed skin as they pointed their phone at him. The problem being that almost all of his skin was exposed, so he didn’t know exactly where to start. Pidge was having a field day, taking so many photos of him that he backed himself into a corner.

“You guys getting lots of studying done?” Shiro spoke up purposefully, quirking a tired eyebrow. Pidge turned to him and mock-saluted, throwing an arm around Keith’s shoulders and grinning innocently.

“You bet, Shiro.”

“What are you studying?” Shiro continued, staring toward the abandoned textbooks thrown around the room. There was a quiet chuckle, low and smooth, and Keith found his gaze instinctively drifting to the sound. Lance was sprawled out across the length of the couch, his arms folded behind his head and eyes glued to Keith. He winked when he realized he’d been caught staring.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lance prompted, looking to Shiro with a cheeky grin. “ _ Anatomy _ .”

“You’re not funny.” Shiro deadpanned, though his exasperation showed through as he brought his prosthetic hand up to his temples and rubbed at them. Allura patted his back comfortingly, though she didn’t look all that apologetic as she bit back a smile.

“You’re not allowed to date my best friend unless you pretend I am.” Lance argued back, sticking his tongue out at the man twice his size, utterly unintimidated. Allura glared at him. “Right, Allura? He needs my blessing, right?”

“Have I ever given my blessing to any of the people you drag home?” She asked, walking over to poke him in the nose. Lance sniffled, throwing his hand over his heart and feigning hurt.

“Fine, whatever.” He huffed, looking back to Keith. Keith who had been doing his damndest to blend into the wall, was half backed into the potted tree in the corner.  

“Push over.” Allura commanded, attempting to lift Lance’s long legs from where they’d claimed the entire couch. He didn’t budge whatsoever.

“That’s Keith’s spot, I’m saving it for him.” Lance responded easily, looking back to Keith and hitching a finger at him in a come hither gesture. Allura groaned loudly, punching Lance in the shin.

“What is this blatant favoritism?!” She demanded, following Lance’s line of view straight back to Keith and sighing loudly. “Nevermind. He’s naked. I get it.”

“Listen, ma’am, he’s in a position of power and I don’t wanna get on his bad side.” Lance insisted, holding his hands in front of his chest in his own defense. Allura shook her head at him, circling back to Shiro and Matt. The three of them settled begrudgingly onto the floor and Lance sat up, waving his hand to call Keith over more obviously.

Pidge looked up at Keith, smirking until he caved and stomped over to the couch. Lance watched him the entire way, whistling low under his breath. “Agent Kogane.”

“Is this what sexy roleplay looks like?” Matt asked from the sidelines, earning himself a smack in the back of the head from Shiro. Keith’s steps faltered and he turned to stare over at them, heat rising to his cheeks for the hundredth time that night.

“W-What?” He chuckled, running a hand through his hair only to remember the hat he was wearing. He readjusted it, shaking his head slowly. “No.”

“Come here.” Lance pleaded aloud this time, holding his hands up and making grabby gestures to the air, pouting harder the longer Keith took to appease him. Eventually Keith tore his gaze away from Shiro’s steely stare, stumbling hurriedly over to Lance. The shock still hit him the same as before when Lance grabbed his hips before he could sit, tugging him down onto his lap this time. “I’ve got a question for you.”

“I already don’t want to answer it.” Keith grunted simply, trying not to dwell on the feeling of Lance’s fingers gripping his bare hip bones. Lance hitched his chin over Keith’s shoulder, whispering into his ear just loud enough for the two of them to hear (much to Shiro’s concern).

“Tell me, Keith, am I on your  _ most wanted _ list?” Keith hit him the moment he finished speaking, slapping at his face.

“Ugh, Lance!” Keith groaned, while Lance buried his face into Keith’s shoulder in an attempt to muffle his laughter. He composed himself eventually, breathing shakily as hugged Keith closer to him.

"You’re an F.B.I agent, correct?” To which Keith begrudgingly nodded, knowing already he was probably making a mistake. Lance gasped dramatically, covering his mouth with his hand. “You’re with the Fine Body Investigators? Damn it, you must be here for me.”

“Stop it!” Keith groaned, beginning to laugh despite himself. He was aware that the entire room had heard that one, but he refused to take notice of their stares. “I hate this.”

“No, you don’t.” Lance argued gently, his lips brushing over the nape of Keith’s neck just enough that it was impossible to tell whether it was intentional or not. “I can tell when your smiles are real too, you know.”

“Guys, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t defile my couch.” Hunk spoke up finally, breaking Keith out of the daze he probably would have been in for the rest of his life otherwise. Lance sighed reluctantly, hands dropping from Keith’s sides back to the couch.

“You got it, Hunk.” Lance called out, hands tracing the dip between Keith’s hips, coming to rest on his inner thighs. Keith felt the breathy chuckle at the back of his neck. “We’ll put a towel down.”

“Lance!” Shiro yelled this time, using his ultimate dad voice. Keith felt Lance shiver behind him, a nervous chuckle filling the silence.

“Actually, change of plans, we’ll keep it PG-13.” Lance affirmed, holding his hands up in surrender. Shiro cast him a lingering wary look before rising to his feet, heading into the kitchen to grab himself a drink. A beat of silence where the entire room seemed tense, and then Keith stood up. 

“I’m changing out of this.” He announced to no one in particular, already heading toward the bathroom.

“The betrayal.” Lance gasped out as if he were dying, rolling off of the couch and pretending to do just that. He sat up promptly after though, and Keith didn’t even have to look back to tell Lance’s eyes were on him. He just barely caught it when Lance muttered under his breath, the door to the bathroom halfway closed. “I hate to see him go, but I love to watch him leave.”

“Hunk?” Pidge prompted loudly and pointedly. “Hit him.”

“Ow!” Lance shouted, presumably after having a text book thrown at where he rested on the floor. Keith shook his head fondly, closing the door securely and leaning back against it. He looked down at himself, eyes drifting over his exposed stomach where he could still feel Lance’s fingertips digging into his skin, down to his bare thighs where Lance’s hands had gone where no one else ever had.

He groaned, deciding to splash some water on his face and call it a night. He could only imagine that Shiro would be ready to do the same after witnessing that shitshow. The others had invited him to stay for the night, but… he knew Hunk’s guest room only had one bed, and Pidge usually opted for the couch because they were the shortest... chances were that he’d end up sleeping with Lance.

In his current state, that didn’t seem like the wisest idea. In fact, it sounded more like tossing gasoline into the flames than anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter subtly gets a little bit longer, damn it. I was trying so hard to keep them short, but alas, I'm a gremlin.
> 
> twitter - https://twitter.com/MelancholyMango
> 
> tumblr - melancholymango.tumblr.com
> 
> wattpad - https://www.wattpad.com/user/MelancholyMango


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